International Journal on Media Management

ISSN: 1424-1277 (Print) 1424-1250 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hijm20

A Review of Artificial Intelligence Adoptions in the

Media Industry

Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted

To cite this article: Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted (2019): A Review of Artificial Intelligence

Adoptions in the Media Industry, International Journal on Media Management, DOI:
10.1080/14241277.2019.1695619

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14241277.2019.1695619

Published online: 25 Nov 2019.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/14241277.2019.1695619

A Review of Artificial Intelligence Adoptions in the Media

Industry
Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted
University of Florida, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Artificial intelligence is a transformational technology of the digital Received 11 June 2019
Revised 18 November 2019
age and an increasingly critical business mindset for companies, Accepted 18 November 2019
especially for those in the media sector with a growing array of
digital content products and advertising opportunities. Given its
unique market characteristics, it is unclear whether AI would offer
the same disruptive power and utilities in the media sector as in
other tangible goods industries. This review examines the utilities
of AI in the media industry, AI’s role in the context of value chain,
and the challenges in incorporating the cognitive technologies in
this industry. It was concluded that AI applications in media have
occurred in the eight main areas: audience content recommenda-
tions/discovery, audience engagement, augmented audience
experience, message optimization, content management, content
creation, audience insights, and operational automation. There are
significant challenges in balancing the effectiveness and efficiency,
and human and AI judgement.

Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been touted by many in the industry as the
transformational technology of the digital age and the electricity of this century
that will power everything. It was even suggested that the adoption of AI is not
a matter of choice but of timetable and strategy because all companies today
must build AI capabilities into their businesses. The value of AI seems to be in
developing a foundation of competencies for companies rather than acquiring
a specific tool or technology. Further concluded that, because of the speed of its
growth in comparison to other technologies like computers and the Internet,
and the transformative impact of its utilities, companies today cannot take a wait
and see approach regarding AI to avoid risk. In essence, artificial intelligence is
an increasingly critical business mind-set and competency for companies,
including those in the media sector.
With the infusion of tech companies like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Google, and
Facebook, the media industry has seen significant changes in audience behavior,

CONTACT Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted chanolmsted@jou.ufl.edu College of Journalism and Communications,

University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611-7011, USA
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/hijm.
© 2019 Institute for Media and Communications Management
2 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

delivery platforms, content strategy, and business models. Within such a fluid
environment, media companies are seeking sustainable competitive advantages
that might help them survive and even prosper in a time of uncertainty. Artificial
intelligence, with its transformative promises, seems to be the next technology of
choice (Castelino, 2018). There has been abundant literature addressing the
applications and implications of AI, but few have focused on the media sector.
Given its unique market and consumer characteristics (Picard, 2005), and the
complexity of producing appealing content based on judgment, interpretation,
creativity, and communication (Gentzkow, 2018), it is unclear whether AI would
offer the same disruptive power and utilities in the media sector as in other tangible
goods industries. Also, the challenges of integrating AI into media companies’
content offerings and platform ecosystems might be significant considering the
unique social impacts of media products. This article offers a review of the utilities
of AI in the media industry, its role in the context of the value chain, and the
challenges in incorporating the so-called cognitive technologies in this industry.
The focus here is more strategic than conceptual.

Background and framework

The Pew Center report on the pros and cons of algorithms concluded that “In the
future, the world may be governed by benevolent AI” (Rainie & Anderson, 2017,
p. 4). The term “artificial intelligence” covers a broad field and includes a range of
related technologies. Because we are dealing with a collection of technologies that
can perform and/or augment tasks, analyses, interactions, and decisions that
usually require human intelligence, AI is sometimes referred to as “cognitive
technologies.” What really defines artificial intelligence is that, rather than follow-
ing and performing a prearranged set of procedures and rules, it can learn from
data sets and tasks, and continuously adapt its behaviors to optimize outcomes
(Deloitte, 2017; Quantum, 2017). Industry surveys have found business leaders to
be highly enthusiastic about the business applications of cognitive technologies.
For example, over 87% of the managers surveyed thought these technologies are
important to their product offerings, and 92% of them said AI technologies are
vital to their internal business process (Deloitte, 2017). Looking into the future, as
high as 76% of the managers believe cognitive technologies will transform their
businesses (Deloitte, 2017). The expectations for AI are especially high for B2C
industries. With the ubiquitous growth of mobile technologies and social media,
marketers are in the age of big data, struggling to analyze and comprehend the
incredible amount of captured data for insights. As the volume, sources, and speed
of “Big Data” continue to expand, AI is expected to play a rising role in marketing-
and media-related contexts (Forrester, 2017).
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 3

AI technologies and functions

As indicated, AI is a collective term of various cognitive technologies. It covers
eight main disciplines from machine learning to physical robots. Though they
might focus on different functions or utilize different technologies, most can be
integrated to achieve greater outcomes. Machine learning (ML) is probably the
most commonly discussed AI technology. It uses statistical modeling to enable
computers to learn and improve from experiences as humans do over time by
feeding them data. Deep learning neural network is a complex form of machine
learning inspired by the structure and function of neural networks. In deep
learning, a computer model learns to perform classification tasks from images,
text, or sound, and models are trained by using a large set of multi-layered data
and neural network architectures. Rules-based systems involve the ability to use
databases of knowledge and rules to automate processes of making information
inferences. Natural language processing (NLP) enables a computer program to
understand human language and to extract meaning and intent from humans so
to interact with them in a stylistically natural and grammatically correct way.
Computer vision is about extracting and understanding useful information from
visual elements automatically. Speech recognition is concerned with the auto-
matic recognition and transcription of human speeches (Deloitte, 2017). Robotic
process automation (RPA) is used to automate routine rules-based business
processes, thus enabling companies to focus on higher-value tasks (Boulton,
2018). This is the type of AI frequently deployed by companies today to automate
repetitive functions. RPA is typically combined with speech recognition, NLP,
and ML to automate certain perceptual and judgment-based tasks, therefore
freeing humans for other more complex tasks. Finally, robots are physical forms
of a machine performing task in unpredictable or other environments, typically
assisting or interacting with humans (Brynjolfsson & Mcafee, 2017; Deloitte,
2017; Duan, Edwards, & Dwivedi, 2019).
Bughin, Seong, Manyika, Chui, and Joshi (2018) stated that AI could be
applied to perform basic functions like classification, estimation, clustering,
optimization, anomaly detection, recommendations, ranking, and data gen-
eration. They further suggest that AI offers the greatest potential value in
marketing and sales and operations such as supply-chain management and
manufacturing. Regarding the actual firm adoption of cognitive technologies
in the field, it was found that the leading AI applications in 2018 were mostly
security, analytics, and customer service/relationship management related
(Technalysis Research, 2018).

AI business studies
Research in AI’s business applications is a relatively new area with limited
empirical investigations and theoretical development. Duan et al. (2019)
4 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

concluded that, while there are many industry reports and articles with
a strategic emphasis on AI applications, there are very limited academic
studies focusing on understanding the use and impact of AI from the
perspective of technology application and with rigorous scholarly investiga-
tion or theorization. Conceptually, scholars have suggested that the biggest
advance of AI is in improving perception (e.g., image/speech recognition)
and cognition (e.g., automate insurance claims) in business processes
(Brynjolfsson & Mcafee, 2017). Agrawal, Gans, and Goldfarb (2019) further
argued that AI’s biggest impact is in prediction in an uncertain world for
better decision-making. Overall, academic investigations of AI business
applications have often touched on machine-human bonds/communica-
tion/collaboration, innovative business models/ecosystems, labor market dis-
ruptions, and value creation in specific sectors (Bolton, Machova, Kovacova,
& Valaskova, 2018; Garbuio & Lin, 2019; Kelley, Fontanetta, Heintzman, &
Pereira, 2018; Valter, Lindgren, & Prasad, 2018).
In general, the literature suggests that AI can enhance the industry value chain
by changing relationships, reinventing business platforms, and expanding the
power of data. AI can also create positive impacts on workflow by improving
efficiency (e.g., automated decision-making), expertise/experience/effectiveness
(e.g., augmenting human experts), and innovativeness (e.g., identifying alternatives
and optimization) (Kelley et al., 2018). Duan et al. (2019) stressed that using AI for
decision-making, either to support/assist or replace human decision-makers, is
one of the most important applications in AI history; and there are research
opportunities in understanding and theorizing ways to measure AI use and impact,
the role of AI in decision-making, AI system implementations, and cultural/
ethical/legal implications of AI applications. In addition to addressing the business
value of AI, studies have also identified certain risks associated with the business
adoption of AI. For example, there are innate risks that might arise from inter-
pretability when machines communicating with humans; verifiability issues due to
statistical truth-based decisions (rather than literal or context-based decisions)
made by machines; and ethical dilemmas in business automation from the per-
spectives of different stakeholders such as the labor force and regulators
(Brynjolfsson & Mcafee, 2017; Wright & Schultz, 2018).

AI in media
In the advertising and media sectors, companies seem to be showing similar
enthusiasm toward AI. A market survey in Europe found that 80% of the
media practitioners agreed that AI would have significant impacts on their
industry (Shields, 2018). Specifically, while 62% believed AI would improve
decision-making, 47% thought it would improve productivity. However, one-
third of the respondents also felt not quite confident in their understanding
of AI and how it might be applied in their work. Less human control (47%)
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 5

and trustworthy insights (55%) were the two biggest concerns, also according
to the survey. Overall, few people felt that AI would have a negative impact
on their work or job availabilities (Shields, 2018).
Today’s audience has elevated expectations in every aspect of their digital lives,
thanks largely to tech firms like Amazon that offer responsive services and active
engagement. In such a data-driven and direct-to-consumer world, media need to
respond faster and better to audience expectations just like other tech company
counterparts (Raconteur, 2018). As media are now interwoven into consumers’
daily lives and technology bundles, media companies must deliver engaging
individual experiences to every consumer in context, in the moment, and all the
time. Consequently, human resource commitment is significant in this new reality
and the solution is logically the adoption of cognitive technologies.
In addition to alleviating the volume of work, AI can make the interac-
tion of media, content, audiences, and operations faster and better. To serve
the audiences as individuals, media companies must understand audience
sentiments/preferences toward content and characters, assess resonance,
and promptly align content with audience preferences. To accomplish
this, media companies must acquire insights from large datasets and act
on it in real-time. The traditional approach of collecting and interpreting
audience data is no longer agile enough for such a scenario. For instance, as
the appetite for online video on multiple screens increases, AI can help
media companies perform mass personalization of video content experi-
ences more efficiently and effectively. Gentzkow (2018) concluded that the
key impact of AI is and will be on the demand rather than the supply side of
media, especially in how content is matched to consumers. The application
of cognitive technologies offers better means of matching content with
demand, optimizing content management, and scaling the process of con-
tent delivery.
Led by tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google
with their expansion into the media sector, AI has been applied in various areas
of the media industry to make “smarter” products and services. For example, AI
enables Spotify’s and Netflix’s recommendation playlists; more effective content
management at media companies; and even chatbots to improve customer
experience. A survey found that the most common ways in which news media
are using AI globally were to improve content recommendations (59%), fol-
lowed by workflow automation (39%), commercial optimization (e.g., ad target-
ing and dynamic pricing) (39%), and intelligent agents to help reporters find
stories (35%) (eMarketer, 2018). Another survey of media’s AI adoption found
that cable systems or MSO (44%) had the highest adoption rate, followed by
cable networks (30%), and broadcast networks (25%) (Mayeda, 2018).
Strategically, how might AI be applied to improve a media company’s competi-
tiveness? Because of the emerging nature and newness of AI, most literature in this
area has been industry-based. Some suggested that these cognitive technologies
6 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

have the potential to benefit media companies by transforming the media-

audience-content connection process (Canepa, van den Dam, Berman, & Toole,
2017; Gentzkow, 2018). Specifically, from the perspective of audience insights, AI
might be used to understand social conversations and other audience sentiments
and preferences (Canepa et al., 2017). NLP and other related AI technologies can
also be applied to understand and interpret a media company’s live and archived
content. For example, media content can be tagged, and rich metadata and context
would enable faster, easier content management. In addition, AI can be used to
integrate audience and content insights, matching audience interest and relevant
content in real-time to deliver personalized content and better consumption
experience. The value goes beyond developing competitive advantages, as it
might help media companies identify new business opportunities as well. For
example, consumer conversations about a show, storylines and characters might
be integrated with other third-party content sources like events, social media, local
news for other potential revenue sources (Canepa et al., 2017).
Recently, more studies have begun to examine the topic of human-machine
interactions or communication in the context of AI (Kietzmann, Paschen, &
Treen, 2018; Mou & Xu, 2017). From the perspective of business adoption,
literature has emphasized the importance of innovative employee roles and
working relationships between humans and machines. From the perspective of
interactions between consumers and AI-enhanced machines (e.g., chatbots and
machine advice), the strategic value of such applications would largely depend
on their nature and implementation. There are competing theories regarding
how humans might perceive machine-mimicking human behavior. From the
uncanny valley notion that suggests the human tendency to feel uncomfortable
toward human-like machine to the media equation theory which concluded that
humans are likely to see computers, television, and new communication tech-
nologies similar to real social relationships with humans (Mori, MacDorman, &
Kageki, 2012; Reeves & Nass, 1996), the effect of AI applications for media firms,
like in other sectors, remains uncertain. Nevertheless, the subject of consumer–
machine interactions is beyond the scope of this study.

Media industry value chain

As Zhang, Fan, et al. (2018) proposed, value chain is an essential aspect of AI use in
business. To analyze the value of AI systemically, this study adopts the generic
value chain framework from Porter (see Figure 1). The classic value chain notion
was configured to offer a system for firms to define and strategize their value
activities clearly. Value chain analysis enables firms to analyze their business
activities to understand costs, identify the activities that add value to the business,
and differentiate from the competition (Porter, 1985). Since the goal of value chain
analysis is to locate areas and activities that will benefit from the change, it provides
a useful framework for examining the utilities and value of AI in media.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 7

Media Audience

Figure 1. Generic value chain. Source: Adapted from Porter, M.E., 1985. The competitive advantage:
Creating and sustaining superior performance. New York, NY: Free Press.

Porter’s generic value chain suggests that business activities can be divided into
two general areas: primary and support activities. Primary activities involve the
physical creation of products or services, their marketing and delivery to buyers,
and their support and service after the sale. Specifically, these activities include
inbound logistic (i.e., supplier relationships and activities related to receive, store,
and disseminate inputs), operations (i.e., activities related to transform inputs into
products/services), outbound logistics (i.e., activities related to collect, store, and
disseminate products/services), marketing/sales (i.e., activities related to facilitate
the purchase), and service (i.e., activities related to keep the product/service work-
ing and satisfied after purchase). Support or secondary activities provide the inputs
and infrastructure to allow the primary activities to take place. They include
procurement (i.e., acquisition of inputs and resources), human resource manage-
ment (i.e., activities related to recruit, train, develop, and manage personnel),
technological development (i.e., activities related to the technology, systems, and
knowledge in transforming inputs into outputs), and infrastructure (i.e., activities
related to serve the firm’s needs and tie various parts together like accounting, legal,
and other general management functions). An analysis of the value chain enables
a firm to identify its cost and differentiation advantages (Porter, 1985). Critics of
Porter’s value chain have stated that the traditional model does not address the
global expansion of firms, is more applicable to physical products, focuses on one-
way, linear value creation, emits some new agents such as VC firms, and misses the
importance of value network with the emphasis of internal activities (Hasen &
Birkinshaw, 2007; Timmer, Los, Stehrer, & De Vries, 2013).
From a media perspective, all activities along the chain are not necessarily
vertically integrated as traditional value activities in this industry tend to focus
8 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

on acquiring and creating content and its marketing, advertising, and promoting
(Picard, 2002). Also, there is a significant symbiotic relationship between tech-
nology and media embedded in its product delivery and access. While Porter
acknowledged that technology is permeating the value chain at every point and
transforming the way activities are performed (Porter & Millar, 1985), the
original model has an organization-centric approach without addressing today’s
user-centric reality. Some have suggested that there needs to be a more user-
centric approach to incorporate the actions of external users, social media, and
interfaces affecting the internal value activities of media firms via a feedback
loop, and in the new media economy, an audience could also create value in
a media value chain via audience insights for advertisers or even user-generated
content (Chan-Olmsted & Shay, 2016).
The literature reviewed thus far has identified various potential utilities of AI in
media. However, the information is scattered and lacks systemic contexts. Given
the early stage of AI adoption in this sector, this article aims to analyze the types of
AI utilities in media and explore the strategic value of AI in media by examining
the applications of these cognitive technologies and discussing their implications in
the contexts of value chain through a qualitative text analysis approach. The
following general issues are reviewed: (1) how have media companies utilized AI
technologies? (2) What are the strategic implications of AI adoption by media
companies in the context of value creation? (3) What are the challenges of AI
application by media companies considering its strategic value?

AI adoption analysis
This review employed the research approach of systematic qualitative text
analysis to gain insights from the data collected. The qualitative approach
provides well-grounded, richer descriptions and explanations of the AI applica-
tions in industry contexts, as the primary aim here is to explore the use and
adoption of AI by identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns/themes with
data (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). Specifically, thematic analysis, an
accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analyzing qualitative data, was
adopted. The qualitative analysis allows for the discovery of broad patterns and
themes from complex business activities, interpretations of various aspects of the
research topics; and enables more granular research analysis subsequently
(Boyatzis, 1998). Accordingly, this study follows the various phases of thematic
analysis, including data familiarization (texts from collected articles), code gen-
eration, theme development, reorganization and integration of themes, and
thematic interpretations.
The data collection phase involved a database search of the literature using
keywords such as artificial intelligence/AI and all associated cognitive technologies
discussed above, along with all forms of media (e.g., newspapers, news, TV, radio,
etc.) and top media and technology companies. The time period of 2015–2018 was
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 9

selected, as 2015 was often seen as the year that AI took off in terms of industry
applications with the shipment of Amazon Alexa and larger-scale applications of
machine learning (Clark, 2015). A total of 149 articles, news reports, and industry
whitepapers/reports were examined to identify media company-related applica-
tions of cognitive technologies. In particular, the media companies analyzed
include Netflix, New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Apple,
Hulu, YouTube, Facebook and Amazon (only media-related aspects were ana-
lyzed), Quartz, the Weather Company, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, CBS, Fox,
BBC, Guardian, Disney, iHeartMedia, NBA, various OTT companies, and
a number of startups. The perspective of value chain is employed to offer
a framework for discussing the strategic implications of the AI applications.
Using the thematic analysis approach, codes and categories were constructed to
reflect the applications detailed in the materials under the proposed framework.
An iterative, inductive process of interpretive analysis with contextuality of the
applications was adopted to collate the coded categories into key themes that depict
common, recurring patterns. MAXQDA, a software program designed for com-
puter-assisted qualitative studies, was used to assist in managing the coding
process. The findings below are organized by the themes of AI applications and
the synthesized implications of AI in the media value chain.

Results and discussion

AI applications and utilities in media
The review shows that AI applications in media have thus far occurred in
eight main functional areas that have the potential to improve media com-
panies’ prediction, perception, and cognition ability (Agrawal et al., 2019;
Brynjolfsson & Mcafee, 2017). While some applications are more relevant to
media audiences (the demand side), others focus more on internal operations
and strategies of media firms (the supply side). In addition, while some are
more applicable to content creators (e.g., content creation/management and
automation), others are more relevant to content distributors (e.g., content
discovery) or applicable to both groups (e.g., audience engagement/insights,
augmented experience, and message optimization). The review also shows
that the companies that are most active in the adoption of cognitive tech-
nologies appear to be the online news and video companies such as the
New York Times and Netflix. The following three themes are more relevant
to the audience's perspective.

Audience content recommendations and discovery

The most notable use of AI in content recommendation and discovery is done
by the leading media tech firm, Netflix. It has pioneered the application of
algorithms in many of its audience decisions. It was stated that the Netflix
10 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

brand is simply about personalized content with the help of AI (Lynch, 2018).
Netflix algorithmically adapts its subscribers’ user experience individually,
including the rows selected for the homepage, the titles selected for those
rows, the visuals for each movie, and the recommendations of other movies.
Besides video, using mostly NLP related technologies, news and audio compa-
nies have also applied AI for better content service to their customers. Quartz
has experimented with media and news app to find articles about events, people,
or topics using NLP. In audio, NLP has been used to help contextual searches for
evergreen content and audio discovery such as podcasts and radio stations’ on-
demand content (Cramer, 2017). AI-enabled content recommendations and
discovery is essential for audience satisfaction and relationship in an on-
demand content environment with increasing product volumes. Visual search/
discovery is highly desired by today’s consumers, especially the millennials
(Chadha, 2019).

Audience engagement
Cognitive technologies have also been applied for better and more meaningful
interactions with the audience. The improvement is most evident in three areas:
contextual interactions, timely engagement, and AI-powered assistants. For
instance, ML has been used to manage metadata generated by OTT providers
to generate insight for best consumer engagement practices (McNevin, 2017).
Washington Post’s Knowledge Map, applying cognitive technologies to correlate
massive and complex data, gives readers an easy way of catching up on ongoing
stories quickly and seamlessly with relevant background and additional info
when readers request it. News companies like the Guardian have used Chatbot
on Facebook to help users searched for news stories. The growing popularity of
voice-based virtual assistants is enabling intelligent interactions with the audi-
ence in content searching, discovery, and navigation when the assistant can
understand linguistic features, emotions, and user intent through AI technolo-
gies. Sports entities like the NBA league/teams have started to use AI in sport
through chatbots on social media and websites for game information, statistics,
and ticket sales inquiries (Cormack, 2018). Audience engagement in context,
real-time, and through AI-powered conduits can contribute to a deeper audi-
ence-media brand relationship in today’s fragmented media marketplace.

Augmented audience experience

Relevant to the engagement aspect, cognitive technologies improve the accuracy of
images and a better understanding of user input/intent, content correlation, and
contexts for a growing media offering, virtual reality and augmented reality-related
experiences. Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon, as well as
other standalone streaming services like Sports Illustrated and CBS, are using AI to
enhance augmented user experience. Technically, AI can be used to optimize
consumers’ media experiences with smoother, enhanced presentations. For
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 11

example, AI helps with video encoding and delivery for better video streaming
experiences. Similarly, for audio, iHeartMedia uses Super Hi-Fi AI to offer custo-
mized song transitions and adjust volume discrepancies like a live DJ would at the
scalable rate necessary for streaming. AI helps OTT services optimize many aspects
of the video ecosystem and experiences. AI can tailor content and branded
experiences to individual audiences (Castelino, 2018). AI applications help
media companies to improve their technical interface with the audience and
deliver better user experiences. The following five application themes are more
from the aspect of firm and strategy.

Message optimization
The optimization of messages here refers to the application of AI for persona-
lized message delivery, especially in the context of advertising/marketing cam-
paigns. When done right, this application benefits both the audience and the
media. For example, for video-related products, AI can index and analyze videos
in real-time, providing advertising partners a better match of message-audience
in context for content marketing purposes (Bragg, 2018). This also results in
better visibility, transparency, and accountability for the advertisers (McNevin,
2017). The same is applicable to audio products. AI enables digital audio ad
server to serve up the right message and offer new ways to track campaigns for
attribution tracking and modeling, elevating radio on even footing with digital
media (Cramer, 2017). The optimization of ad message delivery is so likely to
create better user experiences.

Content management
Beyond the optimization, AI offers extensive media content-related functions.
These functions can be examined from the perspectives of content aggregation,
extraction, tagging, monitoring, and control. The key here is in the enabling of
a machine to complement human decisions and behaviors, thus making the
content management process more effective and/or efficient. For instance,
BBC’s Juicer, a news aggregation and content extraction API system, takes
articles from the BBC and other news sites and algorithmically parse/tag to
make them searchable and useful for trend analysis. This way the BBC journal-
ists can focus on reporting than content management. AI in content manage-
ment seems to a major and early application by media companies. An industry
survey found that 47% of the respondents use AI for automated metadata
creating, generating, and attaching metadata tags to clips to simplify content
searches and accelerate retrieval of clips. This is especially important for those
with large media content collections. As high as 77% of the companies with large
content libraries indicated that they use AI for this purpose (Mayeda, 2018).
Another aspect of content management is in the identification, monitor-
ing, and quality control of the content. The same industry survey shows that
36% of the media companies use AI as a means of quality control and
12 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

measurement, accelerating the process of checking the video for rendering

errors, editing mistakes, omissions, and other issues (Mayeda, 2018).
New York Times uses Perspective API to classify comments based on
toxicity/sentiment (Underwood, 2018). AI has also been used for anomaly
detection to identify inappropriate or fake content like Facebook’s use of ML
to identify fake news. Associated Press uses NewsWhip, a content discovery
tool, to identify the trending news stories on social media. Some media
companies use AI to identify relevant content and then generate clips in
the right format for social media platforms as a way of attracting more
viewers and enhancing viewer engagement (Mayeda, 2018). In recent years,
neural network-trained systems are gradually adding new dimensions of
contextual and intent relevance. With the advancement of AI in the media
sector, deep video analyses are expected to enable better video content
classification and tagging, further improving the accuracy of content linkage,
search, and association.

Content creation
AI does not only help with the management of content but it can also create media
content. Furthermore, AI can identify the content that offers the best ROI. From
the creative process perspective, AI can be used to automate various activities like
plot identification, scene selection, and scripting for post-production work. For
example, Hollywood studios have used AI to perform the content translation and
trailer production with key plots (Bragg, 2018); NLP to convey meaning from data
for story writing, and other algorithms for data visualization. IBM Watson in 2016
produced a cognitive movie trailer for the Fox horror movie Morgan (McNevin,
2017). Using ML and NLP, The Weather Company also produced a cognitive ad
for Toyota. Disney Research invested in a system to automatically learn the
association between images and the sounds they plausibly make (e.g., car and car
engine sound). The results of such research are expected to be applied in sound
effect systems or used to serve specific segments of audiences.
From the perspective of news content creation, Associated Press has used
automated writing technology to produce earnings stories and to cover more
minor leagues baseball games (Alpert, 2016). Washington Post used a data-
crunching program called Heliograf to expand its election coverage. As
Heliograf offers more comprehensive coverage with predetermined parameters,
geo-targeting, and other alerts, the Post reporters were able to focus on covering
high-profile races. The Post has also tested headline writing tools named Bandito
(Alpert, 2016). Money.net and Controvert Media, a couple of news startups,
have worked on the development of automated news feed of machine-generated
data-centric stories (Alpert, 2016). Yahoo Sports implemented Automatic
insights, an NLP platform, that generates human-sounding narratives from
data to create stories about sports teams or fantasy sports teams. Reuters used
semantic technology, Graphiq, for its data visualization in real-time to provide
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 13

data-driven news stories. Associated Press and Forbes have used AI to create
news content using templates and fill-in-the-blanks to collect relevant data and
keywords and generate unique content (Bernazzani, 2017). Using AI, Forbes was
able to recommend article topics for writers based on their previous articles and
headlines based on the sentiment of their images. Additionally, Forbes is
implementing an AI story-writing tool that creates rough article drafts for
contributors to polish up (Willens, 2019). AI applications in this area have
enabled a better division of content creation between humans who can focus
on creating deeper insights and machines that can deliver more comprehensive,
data-based, and timely content.

Audience insights
Effective audience engagement typically begins with better audience insights. This
application addresses mostly the perspective of a media strategy than audience
benefits. For example, AI has provided better attribution tracking and modeling in
audio (Cramer, 2017). The application of cognitive technologies makes program-
matic advertising and marketing forecasting possible with the audience data
(Faggella, 2018). AI-enhanced pay-per-click advertising can uncover new ad chan-
nels, test out more ad platforms, and optimize targeting because of the audience
data generated and analyzed. Online media can design a personalized website
experience using consumer data for relevancy and preferences. The AI-powered
customer insights facilitate many marketing-related decisions. For example, mar-
keters have used AI algorithms to create customer personas based on massive data
sets, including geo-specific events, onsite interactions, referral source, psycho-
graphic factors, purchase behaviors, and past communication, in designing
media campaigns for different customer segments (Karlson, 2017). Disney, using
deep learning and facial scanning software on a few thousand test subjects,
attempted to track audience emotions in real-time to help them make decisions
on a film’s potential (Locker, Loucks, & Sallomi, 2018).

Operational automation
This application underlines the many functions presented thus far. It is discussed
independently because of the multiplicity and frequency of its use. The key benefit
here is the automation of mundane tasks to make typical media operations and
processes more efficient. For example, Reuter’s News Tracer tracks down breaking
news, so reporters are not tied down to grunt work. It uses the power of cognitive
computing and ML to extract insights from the stream of social media. It runs
algorithms on a percentage of Twitter’s daily tweets to find breaking news. It then
reverses engineering how a journalist would verify whether a piece of info was true
by delving into the identity of the profiles and networks. To process and analyze
more data faster, The New York Times uses AI to perform content tagging and
annotation, while Associated Press automated their content versions process,
reducing 800 h a week in copy amendments time. AI is now an important part
14 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

of content production such as automated captioning (Mayeda, 2018), and it is

increasingly used in live event monitoring and social media management. In radio,
AI is used to automate tasks like monitoring media, transcription, ad verification,
and reference clips generation (Reigart, 2018).
From the perspective of automating data access and research processes, AI is
also becoming an important tool for combating misinformation or fake news.
Voyc, a voice-scanning AI system is designed to identify a questionable statement
almost in real-time to fact-check live news. It works by transcribing live audio and
crosschecking the statement against a fact database from verified sources and
accredited fact-checking organizations. If statement conflicts with verified infor-
mation, a text alert will be sent to the appropriate party for further questions.
Similar AI-powered fact-checking tools like Full Fact and First Draft News all
enable journalists to use ML-based automation technology to perform their job
better in a world of increasing misinformation and fake news (Higgins, 2018).
Another operational enhancement of AI deals with the content right management.
Content fingerprinting uses the principle of capturing sample content snippets to
create a unique fingerprint for identification. AI has been used to find exact profile
media, micro license content with blockchain for payment and tracking usage,
identify and track consumer viewing behavior, validate event occurrence, and
protect content again unauthorized distribution. AI-powered automation offers
media companies an efficient means of doing more with less.
The media industry has a large amount of unstructured data that require
intensive human effort for content management, processing, interpretation,
quality checking, and so on. AI automates workflow activities while generating
useful audience insights with scalability, speed, and repeatability (Narang, 2017).
AI also enables the division of human and machine responsibilities in content
creation and enhancement so to deliver the optimal user experiences. A review
of the functions discussed above reveals that the AI applications in the media
sector thus far centers on AI’s value creation through better perception and
cognition. Nevertheless, the cases discussed are anecdotal and limited in scope.
I will now review the applications in the context of value chain framework.

Strategic implications of AI in media value chain

The classic value chain framework suggests two general types of value crea-
tion activities: primary and support/secondary. Considering the changes
brought about by the value-adding activities such as user-generated content,
crowdfunding, and audience insights for marketers from the media-audience
feedback loop, this study also incorporates the role of audience in the
analysis. It is believed that where AI creates value is where the value drivers
within an industry would be (Bughin et al., 2018). The implications discussed
here will also be reviewed in the context of AI value creation proposed by
previous scholars.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 15

Our review shows that, from the perspective of primary activities, AI applica-
tions by media companies can add value to all phases of product creation,
marketing, distribution, and service (see Figure 1). Specifically, AI offers
media companies a more efficient means of identifying and storing raw materi-
als such as images, videos, sounds, and other data during the inbound logistic
stage. At the other end, AI also offers value to media companies by providing
timely interactions with the audience to enhance their consumption experiences
which were lacking in the past under the legacy one-way media systems.
Observations of the current AI applications in the industry suggest that AI is
likely to create the most value in the rest three types of primary activities:
operations, outbound logistics, and marketing/sales, because of their abilities
to reinvent the content creation process (operations), enhance the distribution
of the final product to consumers (outbound logistic), and to improve persona-
lized marketing of the product through better audience insights and engagement
(marketing/sales). From the perspective of support value-generating activities,
AI applications seem to involve mostly technology development-related activ-
ities. Specifically, AI offers a better means of managing and processing the
overall information/knowledge base of media companies as the volume, types,
and speed of data continue to increase. Overall, the value of AI at this point
seems to rest largely in the improved perceptive power and efficiency through
primary activities. However, it is important to also differentiate the content
creators from distributors in this assessment. The value of perception and
cognition appears to be especially important for content creators in enhancing
their operation efficiency (improved perception) and effectiveness (augmented
content decisions). For content distributors, the value of AI centers on being
more effective and innovative in marketing and service through improved data
and cognition.
While the value chain framework identified the area of potential value that
might be created by cognitive technologies for media companies, a more specific
way to visualize AI’s contribution to the media value chain is to examine its
impacts on the workflow of a typical media company (see Figure 2;
PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2013). With improved NLP and metadata processing,

Operational Automation

Media lifecycle Experience

Production
•workflow •rich indexing management •distribution integration •measurement
planning •collaboraton •metadata orchestration •personalization and interaction
enablement analytics

Mutliplatform
Preproduction Post production Consumption
distribution

Content creation & content management Augmented experience Audience discovery, engagement, messaging, & insights

Figure 2. Media workflow. Source: Adapted from Game Changer: A New Kind of Value Chain for
Entertainment and Media Companies, by PWC, retrieved November 28, 2018, from https://www.pwc.fr/fr/
assets/files/pdf/2014/01/pwc_value_chain.pdf. Copyright by PwC.
16 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

media companies are improving this workflow and increasingly capable of per-
forming real-time transcription, translation, and even deeper content analysis. In
this adapted media workflow, AI can play a role from pre-production, production,
post-production, to distribution and consumption through the applications men-
tioned earlier. While operational automation can enhance the workflow from
preproduction to consumption, content-related AI applications contribute to the
production phase of the workflow. AI functionality in audience insights, discovery,
messaging, and engagement, on the other hand, enables more effective workflow in
the delivery of media experiences. Finally, it is important to note the power of AI in
turning the notion of economies of scale inside out. The arrival of platforms/
technologies for rent (e.g., Amazon’s AWS) and AI is diminishing the advantage of
size in production, distribution, and marketing. AI in the media value chain can
potentially change the competitive parameter for this market, reflecting the inno-
vation and optimization value of AI proposed by Kelley et al. (2018).

Challenges in AI media applications

The analysis of AI applications in media thus far reveals some implied
challenges. There are issues of balancing human intelligence and artificial
intelligence, as well as the management of AI’s evolutionary capacity with the
future and social good in mind. Many of these echoes the human-machine
interaction and AI ethical issues discussed earlier. The challenges identified
are based on the themes discovered in the material and the risks or conflicts
revealed in the relevant literature and application contexts.

Balancing between AI and human judgment

One of the major themes about the algorithm era, as stated in the Pew Center
report on AI, is that humanity and human judgment are lost when data and
predictive modeling become paramount (Rainie & Anderson, 2017). The appli-
cation of AI in media is an interesting combination of creativity and logic,
a mixture of algorithm and human relationships. This tug of war is best
illustrated by Netflix in its conflict between the algorithms obsessed IT/product
team and Hollywood-based creative team regarding the comedy show, Grace
and Frankie. During the second season of Grace and Frankie, the tech team
recommended a set of data/algorithm-based promotional images that deliver the
best response ROI, but the LA-based content team was concerned that the
strategy would alienate the star, Ms. Fonda, or even violating her contract
since none of the images featured here (Ramachandran & Flint, 2018). As
Netflix invests heavily in Hollywood product with over 700 original shows/
movies annually, its algorithm centric operation is facing challenges balancing
between the hard data and soft relational metrics. The tension between the
creative and technology/product teams is only going to grow when media
companies attempt to balance data metrics with relationship building. As AI
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 17

becomes more common in the operations of media companies, the balancing of

artificial and human intelligence in decision-making would be a key challenge
for media companies. Existing literature has addressed this growing interpret-
ability and contest/collaboration between humans and machines in the decision-
making process (Brynjolfsson & Mcafee, 2017).

Balancing between efficiency and effectiveness

The next AI-humans balancing challenge concerns the audience of media
companies, specifically, the nature and degree of interactions with the con-
sumers through AI applications. Cognitive technology-powered assistants
like chatbots and smart speakers/virtual assistants like Echo and Google
Home are efficient. With their continuous growth, there is now a need for
balancing human and machine expertise and experience for contextual effec-
tiveness. There are also increasing social concerns and ethics/regulation of AI
applications regarding privacy protections. If personal data are the bedrock
of better, personalized media service, there need to be appropriate ethical
protocols for its use. Another ethical issue concerning the “effectiveness” of
AI is about the content matching process. Media content is “experience
goods” with low marginal costs, an algorithm-driven system offers efficient
means of delivering the content that aligns with what consumers want.
However, the matched content might not be what is best for society
(Gentzkow, 2018). Also, AI applications such as chatbots, at this stage, lack
emotional intelligence and cannot demonstrate empathy. This is a barrier to
customer relationship building and service applications (Roberts, 2017). How
much chatbot or Alexa is too much is another key challenge for media
companies when it comes to brand–consumer relationships. There needs to
be thoughtful differentiation and strategic management of various types of
AI-human interactions (e.g., assistants vs. friends).

Need for data, integration, and competency

For AI to work effectively, media companies need access to massive datasets. This
would certainly have implications for privacy issues and data access, infrastructure,
and talent, especially for smaller and less technically savvy media companies
(Bughin et al., 2018; Wright & Schultz, 2018). Integration or business alignment
is another main challenge of AI in media. According to a media industry survey,
over 47% of the respondents found it difficult to integrate AI with existing
processes/systems and small media organizations have difficulty affording the
building of infrastructure (Deloitte, 2017; Pruss, 2017). The Deloitte state of
cognitive survey (2017) found the top challenge with cognitive technology to be
the lack of business alignment, difficulty in integrating cognitive projects with
existing processes/systems, followed by cost, and managers’ competency. The Pew
Center AI report reinforced the need for algorithmic literacy, transparency, and
oversight (Rainie & Anderson, 2017). When operational systems/processes are
18 S. M. CHAN-OLMSTED

altered by the introduction of AI, there is a need for change management. Humans,
in an AI environment, must work differently and engage in a deeper analysis to
deliver more complex, thoughtful decisions. There seems to be a shortage of
competency for the AI integrated phase of workflow in the media industry.

Reality check of evolutionary vs. revolutionary AI

It is important to note that AI typically deals with very defined tasks, not complex
decisions. The AI market is also fragmented with many different applications and
vendors aiming at solving specific problems. In other words, cognitive technolo-
gies are evolutionary, not revolutionary. The media industry still has a long way to
be able to apply AI for synthetic, complex judgment afforded by human beings.
AI’s value in media rests mostly in functional improvement than replacement.
Also, AI does not form its own opinion, preexisting bias or disposition is built into
the parameter of the system by humans. Human objectivity is, therefore, critical in
this process of designing the applications. The challenge for media companies is to
keep the evolutionary nature of AI in mind while implementing applications that
focus on enabling humans to create and strategize more effectively.

New strategies for the era of unscale economies

AI and rented technology have lessened the barriers and competitive advan-
tage of scale by reducing the fixed costs to compete in the media industry.
Mass personalization and niche markets are now possible strategies for those
unscale, nimble firms. Incumbent, scale-based media firms must shift their
managerial mindset as the cost of scale would increase when unscaled
competitors chip away customers. New, re-bundling, unscaled strategies are
needed to refocus on products (Taneja & Maney, 2018)

Conclusions
AI is becoming a general-purpose technology applicable to many industries just
like the Internet (Castellanos, 2018). Its utilities and transformative power are so
significant that, for media companies, the decision is not about whether to adopt
the cognitive technologies but when and how to establish an AI foundation to
improve their existing operations and identify new business opportunities. The
concern also does not rest on if AI might do evil things (Browne, 2018), but on
how to harvest the power of AI transparently and equitably.
Overall, this review is consistent with prior literature in that the value of AI in
media can be seen mostly in perception and cognition improvement and from
the operational aspects of automation, insights, and engagement (Duan et al.,
2019; Locker et al., 2018). Specifically, automation is about using information to
reduce inefficient, tedious, and repetitive tasks from humans. The use of ML has
helped the New York Times to moderate more comments for its articles faster
than human moderators alone. The automation provides value in reducing the
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON MEDIA MANAGEMENT 19

demand for lower-level human resources and improve operational efficiency.

Insights are about making sense of large quantities of data to generate real-time
information and insights that help humans make better and faster decisions.
Netflix’s algorithm of audience viewing data provides it with useful insights on
show promotion and development. This is the area that can offer high value for
a media company, as suggested by Gentzkow (2018). However, it might also be
the most challenging, as it requires the removal of siloed data in different
departments and careful balancing of human intelligence/experience and AI.
The integration would require significant alignment in the organization and
resource investment (Locker et al., 2018), while the balancing would require
highly skilled human workers. Finally, engagement is about interacting with
consumers at scale and with relevancy, quality, and uniformity. Chatbots and
voice assistants are media companies’ next frontier of value creation AI partners.
As NLP becomes more advanced, the challenge would be less about under-
standing the meaning of the communication from the consumer but more on
knowing the consumer’s comfort level and topical preferences in interacting
with machines. There will be growing needs for further knowledge in effective
human-machine interactions and communication from both the audience
engagement and business decisions/innovation perspectives.
To harness the utilities of AI, media companies must tackle various
challenges. They need to balance human and machine intelligence and
interactions; focus on the audience by experimenting with personalized
products and delivery; and develop the competency and insights necessary
to integrate AI into their existing systems and processes. It is important to
note that this review is exploratory and descriptive in nature with limited
reliance on established constructs or academic literature. The goal here is
to offer a comprehensive review of an important topic in media manage-
ment. Future studies can incorporate more primary data sources from
individual media companies or focus on a specific area of application to
investigate the relationship between AI adoption and market outcomes.

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