Netflix turns to AI to fix its algorithm’s messes

Netflix used to believe that algorithms were all you really needed.

Executives insisted that Netflix would become so good at anticipating your desires that you wouldn’t even need a grid of content tiles. “We want it to be you turn on Netflix and there’s a row, there’s like four choices, and you want to watch them all,” founder and former CEO Reed Hastings said in 2017.

As anyone who’s spent an evening scrolling through the catalog can attest, that vision has not panned out, and so now Netflix is turning to AI for an assist. An experimental new “AI Discover” feature will ask users what kind of programming they want—with options like “Family Movie Night,” “Scare Me,” or “Quick Watches”—and will then show a cluster of videos to choose from. The feature is rolling out to small groups of U.S. users, appearing as an option in the top navigation bar.

Perhaps AI will finally bring Netflix’s vision to fruition. The more likely outcome, though, is that it’ll just represent another way among many to sift through Netflix’s sprawling catalog. As the company tries to stop engagement from slowing down, the algorithm alone isn’t cutting it.

Beyond the algorithm