An overlooked part of the media landscape is how much artificial intelligence is actually powering your favorite media.  Without AI, it would take you forever to forage through and find the content you truly enjoy.

Take a look at Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google.  These companies aggregated together are typically referred to as “FANG” and represent the industry favorites who are looked at for direction in innovation.  

Each of these companies also represents a new way to approach media.  Each learned in their own way that media and content are key to delivering an experience that drives revenue.  

The Facebook news feed is responsible for much dissemination of information — as is Google — which creates a sticky audience to monetize and sell things to.  Amazon is responsible for much of the innovation in retail such as one click and preferred recommendations, and Netflix is driving innovation in “old-school” media by customizing an experience and recommended shows along with original content.  

Each of these companies have massive audiences and each of these companies leverage a lot of AI to deliver their customized experiences and make decisions about how and where they spend their money.

The media landscape is enormous.  The ‘90s through ’00s saw a huge period of growth as cable and the Internet blew up, while the late ‘00s into the ‘10s saw that growth continue in digital media while more traditional forms of media may have faltered a bit. Still, the last few years have shown that good content will still deliver a solid audience.  

In the last 10 years, we have been seeing consolidation where key companies are aggregating the best stories and content.  Now there is a huge amount of quality content focused on just a few platforms from which to choose.  

Just this past weekend, sifting through Amazon Prime, I found 50 movies I would watch if I simply had enough time to do so.  The same would be said if I spent time diving into Netflix, Hulu or more.   AI is what makes that overwhelming list of content even feasible to explore.  

As the old saying goes, “If you give a consumer too many choices, they’ll choose not to choose one.” Solving this conundrum is exactly what AI is doing.  When you log  in to any of these sites or services, everything is customized to your tastes.  

In the past ,we always described what was happening as customization through data, but it’s really AI that makes this happen. AI cannot function without enough data — and now that we are comfortable with data as the core of what is done, AI is the next logical step for everyone to get comfortable with.  

None of this is new, but the realization that we are using AI in the background is just starting to settle in with people.   AI is making these overwhelming media platforms seem personalized and easy to navigate.  The key to battling that consumer conundrum is to make a large world seem small.  

Over the next few years, you can expect to see more AI working its way into the media channels we use and consume daily.   AI will continue to be the tool that helps make a lot of the media we consume more, well, consumable.