🧠 Media industry shifts toward Agentic AI
When it comes to artificial intelligence, most people naturally think of Generative AI (GenAI). However, while generative models have granted content creators newfound freedom, they have simultaneously flooded the internet with low-quality clutter, somewhat tarnishing the technology's reputation.
Against this backdrop, broadcasters and streaming platforms are turning their attention to a far more practical and reliable branch of technology: Agentic AI.
Unlike GenAI, which simply responds to text prompts by creating content on demand, Agentic AI is designed to autonomously manage complex workflows and solve multi-layered problems.
Autonomous workflows in broadcasting
In the media sector, Agentic AI is viewed as the foundation for creating specialized digital “agents.” These agents are capable of handling routine technical tasks without human intervention, including broadcast monitoring, system troubleshooting, and content distribution chain management.
“Agentic AI orchestrates complex, multi-step processes without requiring human intervention at every single decision point,” explains Stephanie Lone, Global Head of Solutions Architecture for Media & Entertainment at AWS.
A prime example of this approach is the Agentic SDK, launched in February 2026 by Witbe. This ecosystem of AI agents automates video broadcast testing. One of its components, Test Designer, independently analyzes a video service’s strategy and writes corresponding test cases. The developers emphasize that the goal of the technology is not to replace human workers, but to liberate them from operational routine. According to Qvest’s Fares Byrke, while GenAI generates outputs, Agentic AI delivers real business outcomes—a distinction that is critical for complex media environments.
Practical applications
New systems powered by Agentic AI are being actively deployed across all stages of broadcasting, from archiving to regulatory compliance.
- Metadata and Catalog Automation: ThinkAnalytics recently introduced ThinkMetadataAI. The system combines the capabilities of GenAI and Agentic AI to automate the large-scale creation of “enriched metadata” for video libraries, taking targeted advertising and recommendation engines to the next level.
- AI-Driven Newsrooms: At the recent NAB Show, TVU Networks demonstrated its TV Cortex service. The system utilizes a hierarchy of master and subordinate AI agents to gather, sort, and evaluate incoming video and audio feeds for news stories. The AI autonomously ranks news items based on relevance and market reach, freeing up producers to focus on creative tasks. Furthermore, the autonomy of the AI helps mitigate human bias during event coverage.
Combating “hallucinations”
Quality of Service (QoS) and regulatory compliance are domains where errors are unacceptable. While generative chatbots are often prone to “hallucinations” (inventing facts), Agentic AI demonstrates absolute dependability.
For instance, Bitmovin’s Observability tool leverages AI to analyze broadcast sessions and debug streaming errors. Meanwhile, Witbe CEO Mathieu Planche emphasizes that their agents cannot inadvertently introduce bugs into a client’s platform—they merely log errors impartially and pass them along to human teams for verification.
What’s next? Experts agree that the potential of Agentic AI is immense, though the industry has yet to establish strict data governance and algorithmic transparency frameworks. Nevertheless, the trend is clear: the media business is ready to entrust automation with its most critical and complex operational processes.
Source: TVTechnology
