From the advent of television to the emergence of the internet and the proliferation of on-demand content, the media industry has long been at the forefront of embracing transformative technologies. Each evolution has fundamentally changed the landscape of the industry, sweeping aside established models and challenging organisations to adapt to the new reality.
Many industry leaders believe that generative artificial intelligence has the potential to do the same, at a time when slowing growth for streaming services is motivating the search for new solutions for creating, delivering and distributing content. According to PwC’s 27th Annual CEO Survey, 57 per cent of entertainment and media CEOs believe their current business path will no longer be viable in 10 years, demonstrating the challenge that media companies are facing. However, it’s a challenge the industry is embracing, says Jessica Hawk, corporate vice president of data, AI and digital applications at Microsoft.
“The media industry has seen incredible change in recent decades and is historically very tech-savvy, creatively adapting to disruption and innovation with agility and new business models,” says Hawk. “We see the industry responding to AI with this same spirit. In fact, we see business leaders in all industries, not just media, embracing AI as a powerful tool to build competitive advantage and drive incremental revenue.”
This enthusiasm isn’t just limited to the executives at the top of companies, according to Hawk.
“People want AI at work,” she says. “According to Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index, three out of four people use the technology at work and 78 per cent of them are bringing their own AI tools. Engaging employees early with alignment to mission, expectation setting, skilling – all the elements that shape a company’s culture and dynamic – will pay dividends later.”
For the companies looking to join in the move to AI-enabled services, Hawk identifies one clear starting point at which to begin their journey: their data.
“It’s the currency of AI transformation,” she says. “As powerful as generative AI models are, they don’t know anything about your business until you ground them with your unique data. Seamless integration between your data platform and your application platform has been important for years, but generative AI makes it a necessity. It’s a big reason why our recent earnings showed the number of Microsoft Azure AI customers also using our data and analytics tools grew nearly 50 per cent year-over-year. And customer growth for Microsoft Fabric – our AI-powered data platform – was up 20 per cent quarter-over-quarter.”
Businesses should also carefully consider the ways in which they apply AI given the extensive range of possible use cases, suggests Hawk.
“It’s not uncommon for a company to look at its strategic objectives to see where generative AI can accelerate time to value and come up with a long list of use cases,” she says. “It is a broadly applicable technology, so it’s important to prioritise the list from what we can do down to what we should do.”
Among the priorities for media companies when evaluating their AI strategy will be finding a way to alleviate the significant pressure they are facing to retain existing viewers in a fiercely competitive market. AI can be a useful tool in these efforts, says Hawk.
“Some exciting use cases we’re seeing include AI-driven content that allows media organisations to gain deeper insights into audience preferences and behaviours,” she says. “For instance, the NBA App, built on Azure services, uses AI to analyse vast amounts of fan data. This analysis drives the delivery of highly personalised content tailored to individual fan preferences. This approach enhances the direct-to-consumer experience and significantly boosts engagement and loyalty.”
The NBA app, powered by Microsoft Azure AI services, delivers personalised content tailored to fan preferences
Media organisations can also use these enhanced insights into audience preferences to increase personalisation in advertising, helping them to grow and diversify their revenue streams.
“By ensuring adverts are relevant to viewers, AI enhances the viewing experience and increases advertising effectiveness,” explains Hawk. “This targeted approach results in higher engagement rates and boosts the value of advert placements, ultimately driving greater revenue.”
Media companies are also under pressure to change the way they create content, with the focus now on reducing costs and accelerating time to market after a long period in which the volume of new content increased exponentially.
“AI can play a crucial role here by assisting in ideation and development,” says Hawk. “By analysing data like audience preferences, market trends and performance metrics, AI generates valuable insights that inspire creative ideation. Additionally, in pre-production, AI-powered tools streamline processes such as script analysis, storyboarding, visualisation and location scouting, making content creation more efficient and cost-effective.”
Hawk suggests that Microsoft is in a unique position as a leading developer of AI services to support the efforts of media companies as they explore the use cases that will deliver the most value for them.
“Media organisations have access to our growing catalogue of 1,700 AI models, including the latest from OpenAI as well as smaller specialised models, like our own Phi-3 family,” says Hawk. “Integrated development tools help teams quickly compare and evaluate models against use cases, like content creation, personalisation, or distribution, so organisations can be confident they choose the right model for the job. Our platform also features seamless integration of data – wherever it lives – along with scalability and flexibility to handle large volumes of data and complex AI models. This helps ensure media companies can deliver high-quality, personalised content to their audiences.”
Microsoft is also collaborating closely with its partners in the media sector to help them develop the new AI solutions that will transform the industry. On the production side, Avid Technology’s Azure AI Video Indexer allows media companies to automate metadata enrichment and enhance search capabilities, enabling them to find and monetise their content more effectively.
Harmonic’s AI-driven platform, meanwhile, is improving video delivery by enabling real-time extraction of key events and highlights, which creates opportunities to deliver personalised content to viewers based on what they are most interested in. Content distribution is also being transformed, with MediaKind’s AI-powered solutions for brand recognition and targeted adverts significantly improving the effectiveness of advertising.
Microsoft is working with Sony Honda Mobility to personalise its in-vehicle media experience, while Evertz Microsystems is integrating Azure AI into live production tools.
“We love seeing the many ways our media partners help customers innovate across their entire value chain,” says Hawk. “These partners exemplify how collaboration with Azure is driving innovation across the media industry, from content creation and management to distribution and monetisation. As AI technologies evolve, we expect even greater innovations that will reshape how media is created, delivered and consumed.”
Sony Honda Mobility’s Izumi Kawanishi joined Jessica Hawk on stage at this year’s CES event
Partner perspectives
We asked selected Microsoft partners how they are using Microsoft AI-powered services to deliver innovation for the media industry.
“Bitmovin integrated its cloud native Live and VOD Encoding products and Bitmovin Streams on Azure Cloud to bring these efficient and high-quality video streaming tools to all Azure customers at scale and reduced cost. Azure AI Services are a key part of the solution, powering critical use cases for video streaming such as automatic captioning for user generated content and contextual advertising suggestions to surface the most relevant ads to users in real time,” said Igor Oreper, chief strategy officer of Bitmovin.
“We’ve been using Azure Cognitive Services to extract metadata from sports and entertainment content, making it searchable via Azure AI Search. With natural language processing, we enable voice-based content discovery. This lets us create streaming applications where users can have conversations with the content, asking for specific moments in a game or searching based on what interests them at the moment,” said Max Heiderscheid, vice president, North America, at UIC Digital.
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2024 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.