Media and Entertainment Companies Go All-In on Generative AI

Creativity is inherent to the media industry and crucial to understanding the industry’s openness to and enthusiasm for experimentation and innovation. Its mission to offer engaging content also drives it to explore ways of enhancing creative capabilities while simultaneously streamlining elements of production processes, reflecting an industry culture that seeks rather than avoids disruption.

In this light, generative artificial intelligence (AI) represents a transformative force in augmenting the industry’s creative endeavors by opening new avenues for inspiration, collaboration and content creation. Through generative AI, media professionals can elevate their creative output, automate workflows and develop groundbreaking experiences that captivate and delight audiences in novel and immersive ways.

The “Generative AI Tracker®” uncovers the innovative capabilities and emerging use cases of generative AI in the media industry while shedding light on the ethical, legal and social challenges of its implementation.

Innovators Casting the AI Future of the Media Industry

The commercialization of generative AI has catalyzed a wave of innovation to address the media industry’s complex and varied needs. PYMNTS Intelligence classifies the companies spearheading these innovations into three categories: AI creative enhancement players, AI audience engagement players and AI operational efficiency players.

Companies under the umbrella of AI creative enhancement players — illustrated by collaborations such as Immerso AI with Yotta and Microsoft Xbox with Inworld AI — harness generative AI to offer enriched media experiences. Companies such as Displace and Telly fall into the AI audience engagement and insight category. These companies employ generative AI to analyze consumer behavior to predict consumer engagement patterns, inform business decisions and target advertising content — increasingly through seamless interactive consumer experiences. Meanwhile, AI operational efficiency players, represented by companies such as Reduct.Video, offer generative AI tools that boost the efficiency of operational elements of content creation and management in the media industry.

To learn more, visit the Tracker’s Companies of Note section.

AI Dreams Up the Media Industry’s Tomorrow

The innovative capabilities and use cases of generative AI in the media industry are on the edge of science fiction. They challenge conventional norms for content creation, delivery and consumption. For these reasons, the media industry offers fertile testing grounds for this technology.

Not surprisingly, it is already harnessing generative AI to personalize content distribution and marketing. Beyond applications rooted in economics, the technology has the potential to reengineer traditionally passive content consumption into personalized, interactive user experiences. The gaming industry, for example, is pioneering the use of generative AI to design more immersive gaming experiences that enhance character and environmental facets of gameplay.

Meanwhile, bound by stringent ethical standards and the need to preserve public trust, the news media segment is cautiously exploring generative AI’s potential, if only to streamline certain complex back-end features of the content production process that do not jeopardize journalistic integrity.

To learn more, visit the Tracker’s Innovation and Use Cases section.

The Ethical and Social Dilemmas of Generative AI’s Use in Media

The media industry is already under fire for its role in broadcasting misinformation and disinformation. The widespread accessibility of emergent generative AI technologies only heightens the risk that these existing problems will amplify, plaguing the industry more broadly and deeply.

This has also led creatives and content publishers to scrutinize the outputs of many of the most popular generative AI tools and subsequently voice concerns about plagiarism. Complicating matters are the opaque decision-making processes of LLMs — and, therefore, the rationale for any given output. One consequence is the increasing likelihood of a legal showdown between the media and technology industries. This could have profound implications for the future landscape of generative AI applications within both sectors.

To learn more, visit the Tracker’s Issues and Challenges section.

About the Tracker

The “Generative AI Tracker®,” a collaboration with AI-ID, uncovers the innovative capabilities and emerging use cases of generative AI in the media industry while shedding light on the ethical, legal and social challenges of its implementation.