How AI is transforming media and entertainment through orchestrated intelligence

Every conversation I have with media leaders today comes back to an important question: How do we turn the promise of AI into measurable business value? Media and entertainment may have more to gain from AI than almost any industry, yet it is moving more slowly. Only an estimated 10% of its workforce qualifies as Frontier Professionals, compared with 16% across industries and 28% in technology, according to Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index Annual Report. At the same time, 51% of media and entertainment AI users already say they are producing work they could not have created a year ago, rising to 80% among Frontier Professionals.

That gap is the opportunity. The organizations that move now can turn emerging AI capability into measurable advantage across production, delivery, audience engagement, and monetization. The strongest performers are not simply using more AI. They are redesigning work around the complementary strengths of people and AI, sharing successful practices, and applying human judgment where quality, rights, trust, and accountability matter most.

This is what makes the moment so exciting. AI can help empower creative and business teams to expand what is possible, while people continue to provide the imagination, expertise, and accountability that define great media experiences.

From isolated assistance to orchestrated intelligence

At Microsoft, we call this orchestrating media intelligence: moving from isolated AI assistance to agent-led workflows that connect people, trusted data, and specialized systems across the media lifecycle. Security and governance are embedded from the start so organizations can scale intelligence without sacrificing control.

Point solutions can optimize individual tasks, but they often trap data, context, and decisions within separate tools. Orchestration connects existing investments, so an insight or action in one stage can improve what happens next. Creative signals can inform distribution. Operational performance can shape audience experiences. Engagement data can guide future content and commercial decisions.

When these connections work across the organization, the value compounds. Each successful workflow can inform the next, helping teams learn faster, collaborate more effectively, and build momentum for broader AI transformation.

Three frontier use cases

1. Accelerate content creation and production

Creative teams face growing demand for more content, more formats, and faster adaptation across markets. When models, data, infrastructure, rights, and approval workflows are connected, AI can expand creative capacity across the journey from idea to production. Collective Artists Network's Galleri5 illustrates the potential. The company reports that its AI-native workflows can reduce movie production timelines from approximately three years to three months, accelerate time to market for television shows by 5 to 10 times, and lower movie production costs by 60 to 70% compared with traditional VFX and live-action workflows.

Kantar shows how this shift extends beyond creation into rapid evaluation at scale. After rebuilding its Link AI creative effectiveness platform on Azure, Kantar reduced ad scoring from as long as an hour to a few minutes and evaluated tens of thousands of ads for a global beverage client within hours. The goal is not automation for its own sake, but removing friction so teams can produce, test, and refine more creative possibilities while people stay focused on the ideas that make content distinctive.

The old world of spending months on a handful of ads is gone. The new imperative is creating and evaluating hundreds or thousands of personalized versions quickly for different digital platforms.

2. Deliver content reliably across platforms

Media organizations must carry creative intent, rights, metadata, and operational context across broadcast, streaming, digital, social, and partner platforms. Connected intelligence can help teams monitor workflows, identify issues, adapt delivery paths, and act faster as conditions change. Sanoma used Azure AI to replace a single national weather update with automated forecasts tailored to 26 regions, making localization economically scalable, delivering more timely and relevant information, and creating new opportunities for local advertising.

In audience testing, 70% of respondents said the synthetic voice was well suited for news. This demonstrates the business value of orchestration: greater resilience, consistency, and control, together with new opportunities to serve audiences and markets more effectively. It also shows how innovation can empower teams to scale high-quality experiences without creating more complexity for the people managing them.

3. Increase audience and content intelligence

Connecting content, identity, engagement, advertising, commerce, and rights signals can improve discovery, retention, campaign decisions, inventory yield, and direct-to-fan propositions. The Premier League is bringing together more than 30 seasons of statistics, 300,000 articles, 9,000 videos, and live match data to power personalized experiences. The Premier League Companion, powered by Microsoft Copilot, brings that context to a global fan base of 1.8 billion people across 189 countries.

This is one of the most inspiring opportunities ahead. Media organizations can transform extensive archives and live data into richer, more relevant experiences, helping audiences connect more deeply with the clubs, stories, creators, and moments they care about.

The opportunity also extends beyond personalization. When organizations responsibly connect audience and content intelligence, they can strengthen engagement, unlock new approaches to monetization, and create experiences that continue to learn and improve over time.

An open foundation for measurable value

Across these scenarios, Microsoft provides an open orchestration layer across existing production, data, content, distribution, audience, and business environments. Organizations can connect context and learning without replacing every specialized system already powering their operations. Cloud infrastructure, data, AI, security, governance, productivity tools, and a broad partner ecosystem work together as the foundation for coordinated workflows at scale.

Partnership is essential to bringing this foundation to life. Working alongside customers, technology partners, creators, and industry leaders, we can connect specialized expertise and existing investments with the innovation of Microsoft Cloud and AI. This collaborative approach helps organizations modernize at their own pace while building on the tools, talent, and trusted relationships they already have.

Trust must remain central to that journey. As AI becomes more integrated across the media lifecycle, human accountability, security, rights, privacy, and responsible AI practices need to advance together with innovation.

That foundation matters because successful AI transformation is not a collection of pilots. It is an operating model that can reuse trusted data and governance, scale successful practices, measure outcomes across the lifecycle, and learn continuously.

Start with one priority workflow

At IBC 2026, Microsoft will showcase how customers and partners connect intelligence across creation, operations, delivery, and audience engagement. I encourage leaders to come with one high-value workflow in mind, identify where fragmented data and decisions are limiting performance today, and explore how an open, governed orchestration layer could improve speed, resilience, control, revenue, or audience value.

Starting with one meaningful business challenge creates a practical path forward. It gives teams the opportunity to measure impact, learn from the experience, and build the confidence and momentum to transform additional workflows.

What excites me most is the opportunity ahead. Media organizations have always transformed how people connect with stories, information, sports, and entertainment. AI gives us the opportunity to do that in entirely new ways, while empowering the people whose creativity and expertise move the industry forward.

Innovation and responsibility must advance together. When we combine human creativity, trusted data, AI, and strong partnerships, we can create richer audience experiences, unlock new business value, and shape a more dynamic future for media and entertainment.

I hope you will join us in Amsterdam to experience these scenarios, hear directly from industry leaders, and go deeper with us on the art of the possible. Bring one meaningful business challenge, and together we can explore and design a governed workflow that moves from AI experimentation to trusted, measurable impact.