Volume#6- AI and TV's new era of interactivity

TV is about to enter a new era of interactivity

Anthony Davies - MD Global Design Sky

The most unsung device in the home is the humble WiFi router. It’s the least talked about piece of tech in the industry but has been the most transformative device of the past decade.

?It makes the modern home possible, connecting more and more devices to the internet. From phones and laptops, to TVs and doorbells. It’s getting hard to buy a fridge, a car, a washing machine, or a security camera that doesn’t want to connect to your WiFi.

?When I was asked to speak recently at the Sky Media Connects Upfronts, it was clear how much these changes reflect the evolving relationship between technology and entertainment. It’s this invisible web of connections that is transforming how we live, work, and play and being connected in every sense of the word is a key to success.

?WiFi is now an essential utility, as important as water and electricity. The router is the one device that understands the digital home. It can see what’s connected, what’s trying to get data, what’s having issues. It’s the brain for the modern home, steering traffic to where its needed most, protecting the home from online threats.

?Frankly making the whole thing work. We all know the drama at home when the WiFi goes down…

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The digital home in action

?Across Sky and Comcast we have over 50 million WiFi routers in people’s homes. We are seeing firsthand the digital home – the smart home – come to life. We can see what the Internet is being used for, what people are doing in their homes, how the home has changed in a world of working-from-home and home fitness.

?What we can see, above all else, is the Internet is there to deliver entertainment. Over 80% of all traffic on our network is entertainment. The age of DVDs, CDs, and even satellite cables is ending, being replaced by a world where all your TV, music, games, radio, podcasts and social media all come in as data streams. The WiFi router is more and more an entertainment device.

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Predicting the future

?At Sky, we saw this wave of change coming over a decade ago. Years before we launched Sky Glass we started exploring the idea of a streaming TV. Developing what we needed while we waited for the market to be ready. We waited for customers to get WiFi routers, waited for Internet speeds to get quick enough, and waited for media companies to hire software teams and build streaming apps.

Today, this streaming story has played out. Anyone can now push a button and send video instantly to millions of screens around the world, including the phone in your pocket, or the Sky Glass on your wall. Content has exploded as result, with hundreds of thousands of hours of video being created every day.

?As this wave of change starts to settle, we can see another wave building: interactivity.

?Of all the entertainment being distributed across the Internet, the two biggest data streams are sport and video games. We see this every day on our networks in the UK and US. Whenever there’s a big football game, or a video game has a new update, Internet traffic spikes, records get broken for the most traffic ever and we have to adjust and meet this new level of demand. If the Internet is there to deliver entertainment, then above all else it’s there to deliver sports and video games.

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Extending interactivity with AI

?Video games are at the leading edge of this new wave. The TV is already a highly interactive screen, with people spending hours a day playing games, interacting with content on the big screen. This interactivity is being extended beyond console games, to casual games on Netflix and motion games on Sky Live.

?AI is about to extend this interactivity even further.

?AI will enable two big changes.

?Firstly, AI agents and assistants will be able to pull data from anywhere in response to a simple request. Something as simple as talking into the voice remote and asking for insurance quotes for example.

?Secondly, Generative AI will be able to turn that data into a TV-friendly format. It will be able to generate video, music, graphics, voiceovers, even presenters, turning any data into content for the big screen. Instant TV. TV that’s personalised and dynamic. TV that can change every second.

?People will then interact with this generated content with their remote, with their voice, with motion gestures, or even with game controllers or their phones. They will get all the power of the big screen experience – big picture, big sound, shared screen – for content they normally see on a smaller, hard-to-share screen. Everything that makes video games so compelling and popular will be brought to a wider range of content.

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AI’s impact on TV and advertising

?We think AI will be less about changing TV shows or changing TV advertising, and more about bringing new content to the TV screen. Content that was previously locked in an app or website.

And we think AI will be about extending and enhancing TV shows and advertising. Adding a layer of interactivity to sports for example, so you can see personalised adverts in the stadium, or watch replays from impossible camera angles, or pick up a game controller and take the missed free kick again yourself. For brands, it will extend TV advertising into commerce journeys, adding a layer of interactivity around product discovery, customer experience flows, or sales funnels. Digital brand engagement re-formatted into something that feels more like TV and less like the web of old.

?The most entertaining screen in your life is about to become the most useful.