Future of AI in Streaming Services

Factspan
3 min readJun 15, 2021

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Artificial intelligence is crucially known to be the digital alter-ego of humans that holds the capability to imply human thinking and extraordinary problem-solving abilities. And when it comes to media and entertainment, AI in streaming services doesn’t take a backseat rather it rides shotgun to improve the performance.

“75 percent of users select movies based on the AI’s recommendations, and Netflix wants to make that number even higher.” — Mohammad Sabah, Senior Data Analyst at Netflix

With AI in action, machines or software learn to dispute, analyze, monitor, and deliver predictions based on past inputs that have been close to what a human search on the OTT Platforms. Including all the streaming services based out of different genres like Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. AI in streaming services is responsible for shaping personalized content suggestion and management functionality.

One would wonder if this at all would be the future or if AI can take the Media and Entertainment industry by storm. So, the answer would be a big YES! But, how and why? Let’s look at if the future of AI in streaming services is significant or not.

Personalized Content Suggestion

In layman’s terms, we may say that machine learning is a subset of AI where the more data you feed as input, the better and accurately the machine can process the future information thus producing even revolutionary algorithms. This is where we call the Content ‘Powerful’ meaning, when the streaming platforms are not aware enough of their content, they will have poor content recommendations.

Henceforth, to take the content recommendations to the next level and better understand the content in a scalable way, it is essential to harness the power of AI and machine learning by analyzing audio and video.

Ever wondered what if Netflix didn’t suggest you a light-hearted funny romcom just after you finished watching a perturbed horror movie? It would be such a hassle, wouldn’t it? Improving suggestions is made possible through analysis via different AI neural networks which work to identify patterns in color, audio, pace, stress levels, positive/negative emotions.

Bringing in the simplicity of making the content recommendations better for each user according to their content consumption patterns, AI is acting as a boon today.

You may be interested to read: AI-based tools in Music Production

Video Encoding and Delivery Optimization with AI

Adaptive bitrate streaming or ABR streaming, a technique for dynamically adjusting the compression level and video quality of a stream to match bandwidth availability. AI encodes video by determining the needed compression level and optimal compression parameter by identifying the intricacy of scenes. Even at a lower bitrate or bandwidth, AI can bring about sophisticated encoded streams which transform the way of offering unremitting videos to growing viewers for watching the video. AI is also refining online media player performance by augmenting bitrate based on viewer location, network congestion, infrastructure metrics, and bandwidth details.

Making Streaming Convenient with AI

It is undeniable that AI is everywhere around you, even when you’re stuck at home, in traffic, at the office, or on your phone. Wondering how? Through a simple feature of voice recognition and devices like Alexa. Thanks to innovation, we’re at ease while trying to search for a song, exploring the movies, adding our favorite podcast to the playlist, and so on. AI has been making our routine tasks easier every day.

AI voice assistants including Siri and Alexa are at our fingertips when we feel like streaming a new show on Netflix or any other streaming platform all made possible with the power of Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have a forthcoming impact on anything and everything. It has its own unmapped ground and undiscovered difficulties yet the technology has so much greater good to be achieved and goals to be struck in the future. AI in the streaming and media entertainment domain is no more a far-fetched dream, rather it has a huge potential in streamlining the workflow processes in the industry and within the platform.

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Factspan
Factspan

Written by Factspan

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