We Talk Too Much About AI

A Call for Clarity

This essay was contributed by Rebecca Avery, founder and principal of Integration Therapy, a boutique advisory firm that guides media companies in optimizing streaming operations and aligning strategy with financial performance.

The Story We Keep Telling

At a conference earlier this year, I was waved into company booths by media tech vendors eager to show me their AI capabilities.

In deeper conversations about what business problems their solutions addressed, what guardrails they had in place to keep data clean, or how their tools could support both established and bespoke AI platforms, the tone often shifted to uncertainty. Many vendors seemed to lack crystal clarity on what their customers need, which is a surprising departure from my history of working with vendors who typically have a sharp sense of the problems they are solving. That gap is a shared responsibility across our ecosystem.

Indeed, this is the right moment for us, as both media professionals and consumers of AI, to clarify our vision as customers. Instead of asking “how can AI solve our problems,” we should be saying with confidence, “here is the future we want to build,” and then challenge AI builders to meet us there. We are not used to working without hard limits on innovation, but AI is removing many of them. This is the time to be bold, to imagine more than we thought possible, and to direct the industry with clarity.

Where It Already Shows Up

AI has already become part of media’s daily fabric. Metadata is tagged more quickly and consistently. Rights workflows move with fewer bottlenecks. Localization, notably one of the slowest, most expensive, and often the most valuable parts of the supply chain, can now happen at near real time.

It’s important to pause here and recognize what these capabilities represent on a global level. When a show drops worldwide, audiences in São Paulo, Seoul, Stockholm, and Cape Town can experience it almost simultaneously in their own localized way. And localization is much more than language. It includes subtitles and closed captions, accessibility features, artwork, compliance requirements, ratings systems, and metadata, all tuned to local standards, technology, and legal compliance.

The fact that we now have technology capable of delivering all of this at near real time is extraordinary. Deloitte notes that autolocalization with generative AI can reduce costs, open new markets, and expand platform membership bases by making content more inclusive and engaging (Deloitte 2025). This is operational progress, and more importantly, it is a redefinition of how global culture unfolds.

The Shape of Work

AI is also changing how media work is organized. Mission Cloud reports that enterprise spending on generative AI in 2024 exceeded $19.4B, with entertainment and media companies contributing to that surge (Ries 2024). This growth points toward more experimentation, more rapid iteration, and a wider spectrum of innovation than the industry has ever seen.

The short technology cycles of AI are reimagining the very shape of media. General AI is on the horizon, and when it arrives it will accelerate reinvention across development, production, distribution, and audience engagement.

Accenture emphasizes that AI in media supply chains can drive significant automation, helping companies scale more efficiently and reduce operational complexity (Accenture 2024). Lower costs are one outcome. The greater outcome is possibility: new forms of storytelling and media experiences created by a rapidly growing base of creators and firms working without the traditional limits of infrastructure and scale.

From Wires to Vision

Understanding how AI works is fascinating, but media leaders will be challenged far more often on their fluency in vision.

Media is already one of the world’s largest consumers of AI. With that scale comes influence. When we define what matters in global accessibility, flexible workflows, better ways to reach and serve audiences, AI companies will respond. The pace of development guarantees that when demand is clear, the tools follow.

The future of media depends on how well we use this leverage. Three years, five years, ten years from now, what do we want to invent, innovate, and imagine? For more than a century, media was constrained by cost, infrastructure, and distribution limits. The most important thing for us as media leaders to know is that AI is dismantling those constraints. The boundaries of imagination are moving outward, and our responsibility is to pursue them.

The Real Conversation

AI as a concept will always be compelling, but the real work is deciding what we want it to do for us. If we use our influence to clarify our vision, including what kind of industry we want to build, what kind of culture we want to spread, we will shape the technology as much as it shapes us.

The possibilities are in front of us. The conversation most worth having is about the future of media we choose to invent, and the responsibility we carry to imagine boldly enough to take full advantage.