As we look to the year ahead, Michael Thielen, CGI Vice-President, Consulting Services for Media Solutions, and Alan Dickie, CGI Director, Consulting Services, share their perspectives on the AI trends shaping the media and broadcasting industry, along with their impacts and opportunities for growth.
Let’s take a look at five emerging AI themes we expect to influence how media organizations operate, innovate, and compete, shaping everything from technology investment strategies to creative output and sustainability.
While AI is rapidly transitioning from experimentation into production, many organizations are still struggling to realize its full value at scale. Recently, at the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) Leaders’ Briefing, it was noted that up to 70% of AI initiatives continue to fall short of expectations. This highlights the need for realistic return on investment (ROI) models and a sharper focus on where AI integration can truly make an impact.
Additionally, AI continues to influence newsrooms, shaped by trust, transparency and the need for oversight. What strikes us is the importance of balancing curiosity with caution. In the near future , we expect AI adoption to become far more disciplined as organizations apply early lessons, strengthen governance, and, as previously mentioned, focus more on realistic ROIs. Our hope is that this will lead to more targeted strategic deployments that can clearly prove their worth.
The market size for agentic AI (intelligent, semi-autonomous systems capable of performing tasks with minimal supervision) within media, entertainment and content creation is projected to reach 35.9% by 2030. We foresee more autonomous and semi-autonomous agents supporting tasks such as localization, metadata generation and workflow optimization. Over time, we anticipate these tools to become trusted resources, enabling more efficient production and generating new creative possibilities.
Building on this trajectory, AI agents will likely begin shaping interactions in new ways. Rather than just simplifying tasks, agentic AI will accelerate and multiply content output, helping teams produce a greater range of asset variations across formats to produce richer, context-aware storytelling. We believe this is likely to be where some of the most exciting creative experimentation will emerge.
Cultural alignment and skills development now often outweigh technical challenges, with change management consistently cited by CEOs and CIOs as a top concern. To keep pace with the rate of technical evolution, staff and talent must also be equipped with the mindset and skills needed to embrace new capabilities and ways of working.
We’re seeing this firsthand. Without structured training that accounts for a range of technical entry points, targeted hiring, skills development and change programs, even the most advanced technologies can become underused and fall short of their potential.
According to Nielsen, global streaming services outpaced the combined share of traditional broadcast and cable for the first time in May 2025, accounting for 44.8% of total viewership. This clearly signals a decisive shift in audience behavior toward on-demand and mobile streaming platforms.
Furthermore, editorial teams using AI-enabled journalism are also growing. However, audience experience and editorial integrity continue to guide decision-making. They’re using AI with oversight from enabled teams and analytics to discover what audiences want to consume. Above all, as operations become more content-centric and workflows are optimized, it’s increasingly evident that strong storytelling remains the one constant, regardless of platform or channel.
As digital consumption grows and AI integration becomes more prominent, so too will the industry’s environmental footprint. Additionally, rising energy costs, growing cloud usage and tighter regulation will likely encourage broadcasters to scrutinize the environmental impact of their technology choices. We expect sustainability to shift from obligation to innovation, guiding the industry toward optimized automation, secure content chains and more responsible production practices.
Together, these developments reflect an industry undergoing rapid transformation, where success means adapting to emerging technology, investing in talent and evolving operations to match customer expectations. For media leaders, these five trends offer a practical roadmap for prioritizing action, developing realistic ROIs and building future-ready capabilities.
*This article is based on The year ahead: leading industry figures on AI and associated technologies in 2026, originally published by TVBEurope.
