AI Adoption Among Entertainment Decision Makers: Survey Data

Most U.S. entertainment and media decision makers are familiar with various kinds of artificial intelligence technologies and using them inside their organization, but they’re the most familiar with generative AI.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in throes of the hype cycle, generative AI has the greatest familiarity (88%) and adoption among entertainment decision makers compared with other forms of AI. Nearly half (49%) indicated gen AI was already being used in their organization, according to an August 2024 survey of U.S. business decision makers (BDM) in 24 industries conducted by market research consultancy HarrisX in partnership with HumanX and shared exclusively with Variety Intelligence Platform.

Voice assistants and chatbots (e.g., to automate customer service) and algorithmic recommendation systems (e.g., to serve users more relevant content on platforms like a streaming service) also ranked among the most-used AI tech at entertainment companies

Yet familiarity and adoption sank for both large language models and generative pre-trained transformers versus generative AI. Generative AI tools capable of creating media (e.g., text, images, audio) in response to text prompts are driven by (LLM) and (GPT). For example, just 66% of entertainment BDMs said they were familiar with LLMs versus 88% with gen AI. Moreover, just 17% said they were using LLMs at their organization versus 49% using gen AI.

This kind of disjunction in the results suggests possible confusion or decision makers having less familiarity with the active, underlying technologies that power gen AI tools, even as they use and encourage the use of gen AI among workers. Generally speaking, 32% of entertainment BDMs surveyed felt they knew “a lot” about artificial intelligence and how it works, while 60% know “a little.” Of course, AI tech isn’t monolithic in what it is, how it works or what it’s useful for, and as the survey suggests, decision makers’ confident knowledge about AI isn’t uniform across its different types.

But it’s also possible that entertainment businesses so far understand and tend to prefer using off-the-shelf gen AI much more than integrating the underlying tech. That preference is genuine, according to a separate VIP+ survey of entertainment decision makers conducted with HarrisX in May.

Despite lofty expectations that AI will bring operational efficiencies, reduce costs and enhance customer experiences, entertainment BDMs cited some challenges around implementation, both technically and structurally within their organization. The biggest technical hurdles include a lack of skilled personnel (37%) and difficulty integrating the tech into existing systems (35%), which suggests companies are struggling to know how to operationalize AI.

Tellingly, entertainment and media decision makers diverged from all BDMs across industries in terms of the organizational challenges they faced in implementing AI. Entertainment BDMs were most likely to cite cultural shifts (35%), resistance to change (31%) and change management (29%) as challenges. Those areas contrasted with industry respondents overall, where entertainment decision makers were much more likely to indicate cultural shifts (+15 percentage points) and change management (+11).

These internal challenges rising to the top likely reflect the contention and dilemma posed by generative AI for media in particular, as gen AI disrupts ordinary business baselines around the need and value of creative labor and copyrighted works. Particularly for entertainment and media businesses — which have undergone strikes over gen AI use, filed lawsuits and struck licensing or other deals — any decision to operationalize a gen AI tool in a workflow immediately contends with these larger order legal and labor concerns, whereby implementation is interpreted not as a practical IT change but as “taking a side.”

“It’s surprising to see the high confidence leaders report they have around AI technologies, especially when we talk to them in depth outside of the survey,” said HumanX co-founder and CEO Stefan Weitz. “Whereas nearly 90% claim to have familiarity with AI technologies, we know that simply isn’t the case. Leaders are struggling for a handhold once they get beyond the acronyms. This survey at least helps us understand where industry leaders need support to have real confidence and conviction in their journey.”

Entertainment and media BDMs surveyed were in the C suite (22%), VP level and above (9%), directors (32%) or managers (37%) primarily at SMBs (71%) versus large or very large organizations (29%) in departments including IT (29%), marketing (26%), sales (11%), and customer service (11%) with the remainder in PR, finance, administration, R&D and elsewhere.

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