Warner Bros. Discovery is using artificial intelligence to improve ad targeting and help viewers find content, but not to create programming, CEO David Zaslav said.
“AI is going to have an increasing impact on society and our industry and we intend to take full advantage to enhance the product and experiences we deliver to consumers and achieve great efficiency company wide,” said Zaslav, speaking on the company’s first-quarter earnings call Thursday.
The use of AI in the entertainment industry was a big issue in last year’s strikes by the writers and actors unions. The settlement included guidelines for how AI could be used.
Zaslav said that WBD’s use of AI is guided by a clearly defined set of principles.
“We believe strongly the creativity and the kind of empathy and humanity necessary to create world-class storytelling can only be found in people, not systems,” he said. “We also believe that AI is another in a long line of technology and tools that will enable creators to innovate and evolve how we tell stories and Inspire audiences.”
Zaslav said that WBD is using AI to improve ad targeting.
It is also being used to identify and optimize ad break opportunities in HBO content. That content usually does not have natural ad breaks.
“This has enabled us to offer the premium content on our ad-light tier and it's also allowed us to create variable ad loads for our content as we monetize it using multiple tiers and platforms,” Zaslav said.
AI is also incorporated into the recommendation engine for Max.
“We've been using Ai and machine learning to personalize content discovery,” Zaslav said. “We continuously innovate to improve our models to present the right content in front of our consumers at the right time. And this is helping us to drive better content diversity on Max.”
Zaslav said WBD is experimenting with AI in other areas of its business, from corporate and developer efficiency to marketing optimization.
