One of the more intriguing storylines of this year’s NAB Show was the realization that the biggest impact that automated intelligence will have on the television industry is that AI will allow production to change its focus from a program-centric process to a story-centric process where content is automatically produced，targeted and distributed to the viewer. In short，using AI will allow broadcasters to identify and tailor video content to individual tastes，and moreso，allow content producers to better monetize their assets.

This concept—known as “Media 4.0” where AI is used to automate the production and distribution of media to any device on-demand—has been around for several years. Whereas Media 1.0-3.0 represented the evolution of media from film and theater to radio and television broadcasting and finally to the current IP-based landscape，4.0 can best be illustrated by the music industry’s use of big data and the cloud to provide the personalization of media consumption down to a granular level， according to Paul Shen， founder of TVU Networks， a provider of IP-based media production and distribution tools.

Using Spotify as an example， Shen noted that the music streaming services’ popularity is not necessarily because of the depth of its library， but by the ability of its sophisticated algorithms to learn consumer’s musical tastes， creating “personalized radio.” 

“I have 90 days of music collections on iTunes and I don’t listen to it at all， I use Spotify，” Shen said. “The reason is easy. I don’t have to do the work. Spotify offers the content the way I want it. It uses artificial intelligence to create the playlist.”