{"id":390950,"date":"2026-04-10T03:01:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/390950\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T03:01:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:01:23","slug":"tubi-manages-to-turn-people-against-recommendations-with-bad-ai-branding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/390950\/","title":{"rendered":"Tubi Manages to Turn People Against Recommendations With Bad AI Branding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tubi, the last good streaming service, has managed to piss off at least a portion of the fans who would otherwise be thrilled to scroll through whatever forgotten \u201990s classics the platform managed to get its hands on. This week, the company (which, it should be noted, is owned by Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Fox Corporation) decided to AI-ify by launching the first native streaming app for ChatGPT<\/a> and juicing its recommendation algorithms with AI in hopes of appealing to the coveted Gen Z demographic. Early returns suggest the plan is backfiring.<\/p>\n

On its face, there\u2019s really nothing all that objectionable about Tubi\u2019s AI offerings. The ChatGPT app just lets users type in plain-language requests for content, like \u201ca movie that feels like a fever dream but isn\u2019t horror,\u201d or \u201ca thriller for tonight.\u201d The requests can be made in a standard ChatGPT conversation by summoning the streamer with \u201c@Tubi.\u201d Seems fine, especially if having access to Tubi\u2019s library makes the responses better, because if you\u2019ve ever used AI (intentionally or because Google funnels you into the AI Overview when you search for basic stuff) to try to search for a movie, you know that most of the time the results are like, the five most generic and predictable picks imaginable. Like, wow, no one would have thought to watch \u201cInterstellar\u201d or \u201cThe Martian\u201d when looking for movies about space, super helpful suggestions.<\/p>\n

Tubi is also reportedly using AI to improve its personalized content recommendations, according to the Wall Street Journal. Once again, a pretty normal use for AI. Machine learning-based recommendation systems have been around basically as long as streaming has, and used to be one of the big differentiators that Netflix would point to<\/a> that made its platform so sticky for viewers. If you can provide people with better recommendations for what to watch, it keeps them in your app longer (a win for Tubi, which is ad-supported) and it gives them what they want. In theory, it\u2019s a win-win.<\/p>\n

Where Tubi is losing people\u2014and what has seemingly turned its supporters against it on social media\u2014is the reported embrace of AI-generated content. Per WSJ, Tubi is planning to increase the amount of \u201ccreator-made\u201d content<\/a> that it serves up in its app. That will include video made, in part or wholly, by AI. That is something that most people simply aren\u2019t interested in. (Or at least they say they aren\u2019t<\/a>\u2014someone is giving these AI-generated YouTube channels billions of views<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Tubi\u2019s embrace of AI seems to be part of a broader plan to appeal to younger viewers. The company believes that it needs to compete with the TikToks and YouTubes of the world for eyeballs, and it thinks that AI presents an opportunity to gain a foothold. But the platform might be misreading the room. Gen Z is certainly exposed to plenty of AI and isn\u2019t afraid to make use of the technology, but polls show the demo is getting increasingly disillusioned about its implications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It seems like generative AI has poisoned the well so much for most people that it\u2019s made even pretty vanilla uses of the technology now leave a bad taste in people\u2019s mouths. Tubi would probably be better off just saying it\u2019s improving its search and recommendation features without slapping the AI label on it. It\u2019d definitely be better off not letting AI slop take over its platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tubi, the last good streaming service, has managed to piss off at least a portion of the fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,173342,3277,26352,80,37000],"class_list":{"0":"post-390950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-media-streaming","14":"tag-streaming","15":"tag-streaming-services","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-tubi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}