media update’s Talisa Jansen van Rensburg gives some insight into how AI impacts the way users experience streaming services.
1. AI makes user experiences more personal
Streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Spotify make use of machine learning — a subset of AI — to improve the user experience.
Machine learning is a process in which machines are fed data, and continually develop the algorithms they have been programmed with. The more data the machines are fed, the more accurately it can process similar information in the future, and the more sophisticated the algorithms will become.
This means that, while users are busy making use of these platforms, machine learning is taking place in the background. This AI technology will look at a user’s history and recommend music, movies or TV shows based on what they’ve previously engaged with. For example, if you recently watched
Friends, Netflix might recommend
How I Met Your Mother.
This is because these two shows fall under the same genre (sitcom), and the same audiences watch these shows Basically, most of the users who have watched
Friends, have also watched
How I Met Your Mother, or would enjoy it as it is very similar to Friends.
2. AI improves the quality of streaming
AI incorporates
data science, which is a mixture of scientific methods and processes to glean insights from data. This activity will become ever more important as the amount of data available continues to increase, and the challenge of extracting insights from the data follows in its wake.
This technology is used to get the data on what users stream the most, and
when they stream. This allows streaming services to know when they need to cache websites on regional application servers for website loading times.
On YouTube you’ll notice that
videos that are not popular might take longer to load. This is due to the fact that the AI systems tell the data systems which videos users are more likely to click on, and it then ensures that the bandwidth usage increases.
3. AI makes streaming more convenient
AI technology can be found everywhere, even inside our homes! Alexa and Siri are both AI systems developed to assist humans with small tasks. One of these tasks includes using voice recognition, which allows people to stream movies or music with a single voice command such as “Hey Alexa, play
Friends on Netflix” or “Hi Siri, open Netflix and play
How I Met Your Mother”.
Siri and Alexa makes use of speech recognition and
Natural Language Processing. Speech recognition converts human speech into corresponding textual form and allows Siri to understand what you are asking her to do.
This makes it easier for consumers to stream content on any platform they choose.
Where else have you seen AI impacting streaming services on such a large scale? Let us know in the comments section below.
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*Image courtesy of Vecteezy