How Streaming Services Are Using AI to Recommend — and Create — Content in 2026

Netflix, Disney+, and their rivals have been using AI for content recommendations for years — the algorithms that decide what appears on your homepage are among the most studied pieces of software in entertainment. But in 2026, AI's role in streaming has expanded significantly, moving from pure recommendation into the creative process itself.

On the recommendation side, the algorithms have become remarkably accurate at predicting not just what you've liked but what you're in the mood for right now. Time of day, viewing history patterns, how long you browsed before selecting something, whether you watched to completion — these signals are synthesised to surface content with increasing precision. The eerie feeling that Netflix knows you too well has only intensified.

On the creative side, AI is being used in production in ways that range from mundane to genuinely transformative. Background scene generation, de-ageing of actors, dubbing and lip-sync for international markets, and virtual production environments that replace physical sets with AI-generated backgrounds are all in active use. The speed and cost reductions are significant enough that they're changing what types of projects are financially viable.

The more controversial use is AI-assisted script development — tools that analyse story structures, predict audience response to plot decisions, and suggest dialogue variations. Writers' guilds have been vocal about the risks of AI in scriptwriting, and the ongoing negotiation between creative labour and studio interests around AI usage is one of the defining industrial disputes of the decade. The technology exists; how it gets deployed equitably is a question the industry is still actively working through.