Jon Kirchner, CEO, Xperi.

The launch of large language models, like ChatGPT, has hurled AI into the public spotlight. It’s become nearly impossible to scroll through the news without seeing an eye-popping headline about the ways AI could dramatically change our lives.

These stories tend to leave an impression that we’ve suddenly leapt into a brand-new, robot-run world. But the reality is that AI and machine learning are not new concepts. They’ve been quietly underpinning many technologies for at least two decades.

As the leader of an entertainment technology company—composed of iconic brands like TiVo, DTS and HD Radio—I’ve witnessed firsthand how AI and machine learning have transformed our business over the last 10 to 15 years.

That said, it’s true that we’ve reached a particularly exciting moment in the intersection of AI and entertainment: It’s unlocked our ability to create highly individualized entertainment experiences.

Why does that matter? In this age of constant information overload, bringing joy back to entertainment requires helping people find and meaningfully interact with relevant content.

Here’s how AI is driving this trend toward personalization—and how these advances are reshaping our entertainment experiences.

Enabling the AI Boom in Personalization

A primary element required for AI to operate is data. Reams of it. That’s why imaging was one of the earliest AI applications in entertainment technology. Images are composed of many pixels—data—that can be sliced, diced and manipulated.

That easy-pickings data was just the beginning. As our lives have shifted onto our devices over the last decade, we’ve brought with us mountains of information about how we choose to live them.

An additional element is needed, though, for this glut of information to deliver useful insights: serious computing power. Recent advancements in processing—from developing increasingly complex modeling to building powerful chips so compact they fit into our handheld devices—have supercharged our capacity to train machines to suss out our preferences from this data.

In entertainment, these developments help us better understand the content people want to consume, as well as how, when and where they want to consume it—and deliver those preferences to their devices.

In other words, it’s transferring some of the mental load of finding and refining a desired entertainment experience from the individual to the technology.

AI Transformations At Our Fingertips

So how is this confluence of data and processing power revamping the entertainment experience in practice?

Let’s look at audio. For years, it’s become increasingly difficult to understand dialogue in movies and shows. A variety of factors contribute to this problem, from the way sound is captured at the source, to our devices’ speaker quality, to the greater range of environments where we consume content.

The industry has been pushing a variety of solutions to improve dialogue intelligibility: soundbars, enhanced speakers, better microphone inputs. But these offerings fall short of solving for every variable that plays into a person’s unique listening setup.

Here’s where AI can generate a universal fix. For example, we recently launched an AI-powered solution that taps into technology that can explore finite details in digital audio data. By plugging that granular data into an AI algorithm, we’ve taught it to decipher and separate dialogue from all other sounds in a recording—independent of any specific language or format. Now consumers can control dialogue volume separately from the volume of everything else, allowing for customization.

AI is opening up new possibilities for cutting content chaos through advanced search and discovery, too. By layering together extremely detailed metadata—or content descriptors—with information on viewers’ content-watching preferences, AI can spit out highly relevant recommendations to help them zero in on personally appealing shows without hours of hunting. These components also power amped-up voice control features that allow viewers to search by speaking nothing more than, for instance, a movie quote.

AI-driven search and discovery technologies aren’t limited to the living room, though. When it comes to the car, AI is giving a more direct line to listener behavior, so they can finetune offerings to align with what individuals want most. Listen to news on your morning commute? Your car may soon anticipate this habit and flip to your favorite news station before you even reach for the screen.

Advertising is another frontier where AI can crunch data to provide more relevant consumer experiences: ads that resonate. As advertising shifts toward streaming apps, these boosted capabilities make it easier for ad platforms like ours to reach specifically tailored audiences with content of interest that may actually improve their entertainment experiences.

What’s Next?

The convergence of AI with entertainment technology offers infinite opportunities to help consumers find and engage with content they love. But our industry will need to address some blockers to get this process right.

For starters, AI consumes tons of energy. It falls to data centers to reduce their energy usage and find ways to power their services with renewables.

Second, regulations on data collection and AI itself are on the rise. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act, for instance, has already tightened regulations in Europe, while related state laws are beginning to take shape across the U.S. Restrictions like these can provide much-needed safeguards for consumers, but they can also create unforeseen hindrances when it comes to the ways we develop and deploy AI and use the data that feed it.

Lastly, the next horizon of personalization—presence detection—adds another layer of privacy concerns. While environmental sensing can help to deliver ever-more personalized entertainment experiences, companies must develop technology that ensures consumer benefits greatly outweigh privacy concerns. They also need to give consumers the education to decide on these tradeoffs for themselves and easily manage their privacy profiles.

Do I think AI will take out humanity any time soon on that infamous theoretical quest for paperclips? No. Do I see how it’s already shaping better entertainment experiences for all of us? Yes, every time I sit down with my family in front of the TV, find just the right show to watch for that moment—and, soon, will actually be able to better control and hear the dialogue.

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