Tubi — the ad-supported on-demand streaming service owned by Fox that’s part of the FAST explosion — has more than 200,000 movies and TV shows at the ready for its 74 million monthly active users. The trick is figuring out what to watch. Or, rather, Tubi wants to figure out what you want to watch. And to that end, today it announced that it’s using a new search scheme to help you make your way through the platform.
Rabbit AI, as it’s being called, uses ChatGPT-4 (that’s a step above the free one you’ve probably been using) to go beyond what Tubi says its previous keyword searches could suss out. First is that the whole thing is much more conversational, like if you were talking to a buddy.
“One in five streamers binge-watch because it’s convenient or easier than searching for another show as time spent looking is usually a mix of scrolling, maybe bickering over whether to watch a comedy or a horror movie.” Blake Bassett, Senior Director of Product at Tubi, said in a press release. “At Tubi, we’re uniquely situated to find content for viewers that’s specific to the moment they’re in because of our large library and our personalization and machine learning algorithms. With Rabbit AI we’re making the content discovery experience fun again.”
Tubi’s been using sharks as an example here. So instead of just finding the best movies on Tubi about sharks — which can run the gamut from the criminally underrated and very campy Deep Blue Sea to the more kid-friendly Shark Tale — you could say “Show me movies about sharks that are funny.” OK, that query could ping both of our examples, but you get the idea.
Once you get an answer (and question) that you like, you can save both ends into your “My List” to refer back to it later. As you do so, your home screen will adjust to surface similar content later. So the more you use it, the more useful it will be.
The new Rabbit AI is available now as a beta feature, starting in Tubi’s iOS app.
