“There is the question about how much publishers are using these tools themselves,” said Niamh Burns, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “I think the amount of deployment is low, there is a lot of experimenting out there, but I could see a world where publishers will use some of these tools a lot. However, publishers must be realistic about the scale of efficiencies and revenue generation opportunities.”

Burns said that so far the willingness of publishers to use AI tools that directly impact or create editorial content related to how commercially pressured the media environment was for that operator.

“I do think that those media companies that are most commercially at risk in the near term are also at risk of overdoing it,” said Burns.

“A lot of that is to do with commercial models. If you rely on advertising from lots of traffic on social platforms and all you need is scale, not necessarily quality, then AI could be seen to really help.

“Their track record of creating programming that cuts through has been underwhelming. They have spent a lot of money and made a lot of shows that haven’t really entered the public consciousness,” says Tom Harrington, head of TV at the Enders Analysis consultancy. “And they have a big subscriber base, a lot of people who have access to it, but you can count on one hand the shows which have really cut through.”

“No one knows what Max is, no one really understands the HBO brand,” says Harrington. “They kind of like the shows when they’re on Sky, but they’re not enormous shows outside Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon.”

Tom Harrington, head of television at Enders Analysis, says there would be “obvious advantages” for consumers.

“If you add all the tech spend of the PSBs together, it’s still insignificant compared with Netflix or Amazon, who set the perception of what a streaming service should be,” he says.

“Divided up and doing their own thing it’s going to be even worse, so combined they could pull together something half-decent that would work.”

“I think print will outlast me and you,” she says. “If you look at your Enders Analysis or whatever they’ll tell you the same thing.”

Advertising revenue is expected to stabilise in 2024, which an Enders Analysis report said will provide a more stable planning base.

“Recent volatility has tested the broadcaster’s flexibility and proactiveness, above its competitors who are more insulated,” wrote analysts at Enders.

Enders pointed out other issues for Channel 4, including a “quantifiable drop” in the relative success of programming compared to pre-Covid-19 and a continued loss of broadcast viewing share among 16-34-year-olds.

“The worry for Character.ai is the things it is doing can easily be replicated by big tech firms with financial firepower and huge global reach,” said Jamie MacEwan, an analyst at Enders Analysis. “Those star founders were its biggest selling point in the industry, I’m not sure if without them it can pretend to hold on to a technological edge.”

“The DPC’s decision when announced could heap political pressure on TikTok,” said Jamie MacEwan, a senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, a London-based research firm.

Measures could include requiring further commitments from TikTok to open European data centers for storing its user data locally.

Still, “unless there are any truly explosive revelations, tensions will be resolved along technical lines rather than through calls for a ban,” he said.

“The volume of true crime surely asks for that,” says Tom Harrington, Head of Television at Enders Analysis. “With the coming of the streamers, every crime that’s happened has a documentary now and it’s sort of like… I guess you have to stand out.”

Telefónica’s innovation can be directly relevant to the media sector — it owns Spanish pay TV and SVOD operator Movistar Plus+, Europe’s largest film and TV investor among telcos. But it will play out over a far wider scale. The focus at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress was largely on gaining cost efficiencies in mobile operators complex systems, observes James Barford of London-based research company Enders Analysis.

“You can make an enormous amount of money from a kids TV show and it can be more successful than almost any other large format,” agrees Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis. “It travels well, language can change easily, there’s a new audience every couple of years and lots of merch opportunities. But to get commissioned in the first place is very difficult. In the UK there’s so many limits on what ads you can put around it so there’s no demand from advertisers and it’s not a good business for commercial broadcasters.”