AI should be viewed as a powerful tool to aid software engineers, not a threat.
Just as the internet disrupted how we live and work, generative AI holds the same potential to change life as we know it. Generative AI uses neural networks to learn from extensive data and produce unique outputs, demonstrating its ability to mimic and even exceed human creativity. Use cases for generative AI span various domains, including music, art and written content.
But what does it mean for the video industry? From speeding up content creation and post-production to enabling content to be delivered to users with enhanced UX due to improved discoverability, personalisation and targeted advertising, the potential use cases for OTT are endless.
There are also promising signs that generative AI will transform the OTT engineering and software development process by playing an integral part in aspects such as code generation and review, refactoring, documentation writing and summarising, and writing unit tests, with the potential to have a profound impact on the industry.
How AI Will Transform Development
AI should be viewed as a powerful tool to aid software engineers, not a threat. Although AI-generated code can be inaccurate, it helps produce fitting code snippets and review code for errors. This assists a software engineer in coding, improving efficiency and saving time.
AI can also be used for another essential part of the engineering process, refactoring, which improves code efficiency, achieves faster load times, reduces bandwidth consumption and enhances UX. By proposing cleaner, more efficient ways to structure code, generative AI models could support the maintenance of a high-quality codebase.
Documenting code and software architectures is another fundamental part of software engineering, because it ensures developers have access to comprehensive resources for future reference and collaboration. Automating this task by employing AI to write detailed, accurate documentation would allow developers to spend more time coding and less time writing documentation.
AI can also help summarise existing documentation. In large-scale software development projects, teams often encounter lengthy documentation that can be overwhelming to review. With generative AI, developers can quickly obtain concise and coherent summaries of technical documents, making it easier to grasp complex concepts and identify key information, saving time and improving efficiency.
Writing unit tests is another critical aspect of software development, because it ensures the reliability and stability of code. AI could potentially generate tests to increase coverage and catch issues early on. This would lead to more efficient testing processes and faster deployment cycles.
There’s little doubt that AI brings significant value in automating time-consuming yet necessary tasks, freeing developers and operational teams to focus their time and expertise on more complex tasks.
Looking Ahead: The Impact of AI
So, what impact will all of this have on the video industry? Two significant outcomes come to mind.
First, as the development process for video applications becomes more efficient, the time required for development will drastically reduce, possibly even to just a few days. This will likely lead to new apps, as brands and content owners rush to bring new services to the market.
Second, various operational tasks such as quality assurance, artwork, design, analysis, automation and analytics data for marketing campaigns will enhance market penetration and presentation layers, ensuring maximum user engagement at the opportune moment. Consequently, the quality of user experience and the level of personalisation will improve. AI-driven tools will enable video services to understand precisely what the user wants, and how.
Predicting AI’s role in the OTT industry ten to twenty years from now is challenging. We may reach a point where AI creates bespoke content from beginning to end, tailored precisely to individual user preferences. While we are only scratching the surface of AI’s capabilities, there is little doubt that it will genuinely transform the video industry. Exciting times lie ahead for us all.
Markus Hejdenberg is Head of Product Sales & Marketing at Accedo
