< Back to CTAM Think: The AI Series
- November 2026
By Eddie Hold
President, Connected Intelligence®
Circana
No one was ready for the Internet when it arrived. Despite being around for more than 20 years before the world wide web was layered on top of it, almost every company embraced it with the tepid imagination they already had and considered that the Web was interesting but no threat to the status quo. Thirty-five years later that concept seems both quaint and deadly with pretty much every consumer-facing industry having gone through monumental – and often fatal – change. Just ask anyone from the music industry or, of course, the TV world.
Change often comes from new sources, and in the case of the TV industry, that source began with Netflix, a newcomer in an almost adjacent industry (home video), that saw the potential to do something different by harnessing the power of the Internet. Consumers were looking for a better DVR solution: Netflix solved this by leveraging new technology to build something different, and better.
Since that time, the tech industry has produced many innovations that have caused after-tremors of innovation, all pretty much based on how to make better use of the Internet. But this new era of AI is, without doubt, of the same magnitude as the consumerization of the Internet back in 1990.
Actually, its magnitude is far greater: the Internet grew relatively slowly in the first few years, partially held back by the technology it was reliant on such as the Internet connection to the home (dial up modems anyone?). AI is seemingly held back by nothing and the changes it drives will be fast, furious and game changing.
But, as with the rise of the Internet, don’t ask consumers what they want, because they simply do not know. According to Circana’s Connected Intelligence AI Report (July 2026), 35% of consumers want nothing to do with AI, and yet they are surely rubbing shoulders with it when they invoke an Internet search or use a streaming service recommendation engine. Instead, innovation will be driven despite the consumer’s desire for a better search and discovery engine or other banal improvements.
Yes, AI will be used to develop far better search and discovery solutions – with cross-platform recommendations – but that is the lowest hanging fruit. The true innovation will come from new and creative ways to improve the overall TV experience such as subscription management or mood-based content discovery. As Walt Disney believed, audiences do not know what they want until they experience it, a philosophy shared among a handful of core innovators who have shaped the technology future.
This, of course, is a somewhat hard pill to swallow because the suggestion is that an industry relatively comfortable with the current status quo should look to shake up everything, seemingly risking it all. In the technology world, that is called “eating your own babies” a term that is less cannibalistic and more focused on how you would compete against your own dominant product… before someone else comes along and does it first.
On the other hand, complacency with the status quo kills just as quickly: just ask Nokia or Blackberry, which held dominant positions in the mobile phone world and ignored the risk of newcomer Apple.
And so, back to AI, the biggest technological threat – or asset – since the Internet. As with all new technologies, there are those who will prefer the status quo (the 35% we referenced earlier) but the bigger challenge will be overcoming the lack of trust. Among the consumer base that is interested in using AI for TV search and discovery, a whopping 76% only trust AI “a little or somewhat”.
It does not matter. Trust comes over time and, more importantly, trust comes with familiarity with the new solution. No one truly trusts AI: seemingly half the people who are building these AI bots do not trust what they are building. But there is a big difference between trying to garner trust of a broad, generic “thing” such as AI, and building trust for your particular AI-infused innovation.
After all, no one trusts everything they see on the Internet, but they have pockets of trust. That is the goal with the next leap forward: be a pocket of trusted innovation… and innovate.
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