Fubo Introducing AI-Generated News Headlines to Show Viewers Important Stories Fast
The auto-generated headlines could aid viewers in discovering important stories, but raises the usual questions about the place of AI in society.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to generate discussion about its role in everyday life as it is adopted more and more into new aspects of our daily routines. Fubo is the latest company to make a meaningful incorporation of AI into its operations, as the company has announced that it is rolling out a new “Instant Headlines” feature which generates a headline summing up the programming topic on a given news channel and shows it to the subscriber in 10 words or less.
- Fubo’s Instant Headlines feature is rolling out first to customers on Android TV and Amazon Fire TV devices.
- The feature will work with national news channels including MSNBC, as well as local stations in select markets.
- The aim is to make it easier for viewers to make decisions about what they’ll watch in real-time.
What Is Fubo’s Instant Headlines Feature?
Instant Headlines will be found in the Fubo home page’s news channel row. Customers can scroll to the row and see headlines overlaid on the tile itself, showing them at a glance what topic is being shown or discussed on that channel. Fubo says a similar feature is coming to sports and entertainment titles in the near future, as well. As the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election draws closer, this feature will be very useful to viewers who want to stay as up-to-date as possible.
Check out a Demo of Fubo’s Instant Headlines:
The demo shows the feature working with MSNBC and NewsNation, but Fubo’s press release says it has signed up various national cable news channels, as well as local news stations in some markets for the Instant Headlines feature. The home page constantly refreshes each channel tile in the carousel, updating the user on the current topic being discussed on that channel As of now, the feature is only available for viewers who watch Fubo on Amazon Fire TV and Android TV-powered devices. Instant Headlines is still in beta testing, so its final form may see some tweaks from the version that’s available now.
Are AI-Generated Headlines a Good Thing?
The introduction of AI-generated headlines that describe a channel’s content will certainly aid customers in deciding which news programming they want to see. As the election creeps closer, this will make it a cinch for viewers to find topics that interest them the most from the news sources they trust.
But any use of AI is bound to raise ethical questions, especially when the AI in question is being used to generate headlines designed to get a viewer to click that headline and watch the selected channel. Will the AI generator create all headlines equally? Will it accurately describe the content playing on a given channel at a given time? What kind of oversight is being performed on the feature?
As long as Fubo can keep its AI generator from doing things like producing favorable headlines for one news channel and unfavorable ones for another channel, it will likely be able to avoid serious ethical dilemmas with the Instant Headlines feature. But hopefully Fubo programmers keep a close eye on the feature to ensure it does not jump off the rails. The company is relying on Instant Headlines to get users more engaged with its news content, but it’s also asking them to trust that the feature is giving them accurate, timely information about what’s on.
“Today’s launch of our first-of-its-kind news feature is aimed to improve live content discovery on Fubo, in real time,” said Fubo CEO David Gandler. “Innovating around our news programming is a focus this year, particularly as we head into an election cycle. We’re excited to further evolve Instant Headlines and offer additional news-based product features during such a critical time in world news. Instant Headlines is just the first product we’re rolling out this year aimed to ensure our users never miss a moment of the most meaningful content.”
Fubo purchased India-based AI-powered computer vision platform Edisn.ai, an AI-powered computer vision platform with video recognition technologies back in 2021. At the time, the thought was that this would be the first step in propelling the company into live sports betting, but after the company abandoned those plans in the fall of 2022, this is the first meaningful integration of AI that Fubo has announced.
Fubo
Fubo is a live TV streaming service with about 90 top channels that start at $79.99 per month. This plan includes local channels, 25 of the top 35 cable channels, and regional sports networks (RSNs). In total, you should expect to pay about $91.99 per month, after adding in their RSN Fee. Fubo was previously known as “fuboTV.”