Are we ready for custom content on the Telly?
Google's AI video generation is landing on UK TVs... Custom content, optimised for an audience of one, could change everything! The TV moves from receiver to creator? Wait, hasn't all of this happened before?...
Generative AI video is making waves everywhere, but having the capability land on the TV points to a big shift that we've been talking about, and demonstrating, in the BBC Blue Room for a while now: custom content, possibly tailored for an audience of one, made from the sofa.
For most of TV’s history, the screen was the last item in the chain.
Content was commissioned, made, scheduled, distributed, discovered, and then finally displayed on a “mere” device in the corner of the living room.
Google Gemini’s “Create” mode says: “Describe what you want to create.”
That is a very different starting point from “what do you want to watch?”
It points to a world where the TV is not just showing content, but helping to make it.
Indulge me, if you will... When I started my career in 2005, the same year YouTube launched, the mainstream media industry was absolutely not ready to foresee, let alone welcome, a world where user-generated content would become normal.
However, the evolution of YouTube and the internet has enabled the transformation of TV audiences, seeing them change from passive recipients to active creators (or partners).
Audiences were recipients, then became creators.
The TV was the receiver. It is now becoming a creator too.
From the viewer’s perspective, they will soon have the option to stand in front of the TV and, by typing or speaking a prompt, have the TV make custom content.
True: the quality may be FAR from perfect in these early stages. That's not the point; we look for trends and signals, and we're pretty good at it. For example, we saw a similar evolution and signal with Google's NotebookLM, where its early “synthetic audio” acted as the precursor to bespoke podcast generation - something that is now a standard feature in Alexa+ devices in the US.
One Blue Room scenario we offer as a provocation is imagining a busy parent asking their TV:
“Make me a Key Stage 2 maths cartoon for my kids while I’m getting ready for school. Have it star Bluey, Mickey Mouse and Hey Duggee.”
How does that make you feel?
- What happens in a world of conflicting intellectual property?
- Will US AI models and tech platforms understand UK educational context?
- Will parents know enough to judge whether the output is accurate?
That's just one example, that hopefully shows how Gen AI is rushing into a world much faster than media literacy, technical literacy or regulation are ready for.
For BBC colleagues, this is exactly the sort of thing we can demonstrate in the Blue Room. For everyone else, I’m very happy to talk about what the future role of the TV might be.
#bbcblueroom
https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/16522213?hl=en-GB
https://vergemagazine.co.uk/tcl-expands-google-tv-with-gemini-across-more-european-tvs-in-2026/