How the reality giant behind 'Big Brother' and 'MasterChef' is using AI to win on YouTube

While some Hollywood chiefs wade into high-profile and risky uses of AI, Banijay Entertainment, the unscripted giant behind hits like "Big Brother" and "MasterChef," is betting on a more down-to-earth use.

It's jumping on the AI bandwagon as it makes a big push to follow audiences and advertisers to YouTube.

The French production company has been stepping up its digital efforts to wring more value out of its library and boost its presence on platforms like YouTube, where it already posts full show episodes. To do that, it's using AI to index its 200,000 hours of content based on things like speech, scene details, and sentiment. The goal is to find the most compelling moments for clips, compilations, and the like.

Banijay's AI efforts align with a broader movement in Hollywood to adapt to the shift of audiences to social media platforms by exploring innovative ways to make money from established IP. YouTube, which in addition to dominating phones has become the top streaming platform on US TV screens, is the centerpiece of many of these efforts.

"We need to 100X the number of assets we put on social media," Damien Viel, Banijay's chief digital and innovation officer, told Business Insider. "It's as simple as that."

Viel said there's an endless list of prompts his company can feed the AI: think the 10 best recipes on "MasterChef," toughest questions on "Deal or No Deal," or the biggest arguments on "Big Brother."

"AI is not necessarily shiny and sparkling," Viel said. "The biggest revolution right now is indexing 200,000 hours of archives to find moments that matter."

Entertainment companies need to beef up their presences on YouTube

There are good reasons for the social push. Google's YouTube has commanded the biggest share of US TV viewing for many months running, blowing past traditional entertainment companies Netflix and Disney and effectively becoming "TV" for younger generations.

Banijay is aided by a new three-year deal with Moments Lab, a French AI startup that helps companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Hearst make videos faster and cheaper, and recently announced $24 million in funding. Other companies are also getting into the space. Chronicle Studios is another startup that's helping animators grow their businesses and boost their social media presences using AI tools.

Philippe Petitpont, cofounder of Moments Lab, said he's seeing an uptick in media and entertainment companies using AI to make vast IP libraries more accessible to their content teams. What sets Banijay apart is the depth of its archives.

"After acquiring more than 130 production companies, no single team could ever keep track of it all," Petitpont said. "Now they will be able to tap into every piece of content they own."

Viel said AI is critical to Banijay producing the volume of content it needs on YouTube. The company is starting to get an idea of what AI can do. In a three-month test, AI reduced the time it took to find the right bits for clips by as much as 80%, Viel said. He estimated that Banijay would be able to make 100 times as many clips at a cost of $10 per clip, down from the current $800, by centralizing searching and editing across 23 countries.

The bet is that putting more on social media in turn will generate more ad dollars that can be plowed back into original productions.

AI is also helping Banijay determine which shows to promote where, with queries such as, "Search recipes we can legally use in Australia." Shows are often tangled up in a knot of local and overseas rights

Banijay says AI isn't an idea factory

What are AI's applications beyond clipping for social media? The closer AI gets to the process of making original content, the more companies get themselves in trouble with nervous entertainment workers. Viel chose his words carefully here. He said he sees Moments Lab as a great research tool for creative teams, but didn't say he expected it to spit out ideas for new shows.

Viel said AI could help creative teams find inspiring IP in the archives that they didn't know existed. They could also use AI to take footage from the company's own shows to create a pitch reel.

"I strongly believe that AI won't be able to generate new ideas," he said.

It's still early days in understanding what AI can do for companies' bottom lines. Viel is pushing the idea that Banijay can create a new revenue stream with AI's help from clipping. However, he acknowledged that there are many unknowns surrounding the financial impact.

Viel described his approach as three steps:

• Working with companies like Adobe that say they use AI responsibly and don't train their AI on Banijay's data
• Providing staff with training to use such tools
• Surveying teams about the tools they want to use

Banijay is still mostly unscripted, but in the future, Viel envisions using AI to write better scripts and improve the pitch process so the company can sell more scripted projects.

One of Hollywood's big worries about AI is that it's a job killer. Banijay is adamant that this program is not that. The company says it wasn't posting enough clips to begin with, and the social media opportunity is expanding so fast that it's hiring for those teams, not shrinking them. The idea is that AI will eliminate hours of manual search and redeploy people's time into higher-value work while meeting the volume demanded by social media.

Viel wouldn't give a hiring number but said AI was a job creator.

"The number of people we're currently hiring on social media is a crazy number," he said. "It's clearly creating jobs."