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As remarkable as it seems, AI is the most “underhyped” technology on the planet, according to Avi Saxena, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD)
“AI is going to change our world, and artificial general intelligence (AGI) hasn't even knocked on our doors yet. When that happens, the world will be transformed in a way we’ve never seen before.”
AGI is defined as the hypothetical type of AI system which, in theory, could match or exceed the cognitive abilities of human beings.
“AGI will shape the world more than the impact of mobile and internet technologies combined,” Saxena says. “We should be prepared for that instead of trying to fight it.”
Saxena, who is responsible for all the technology that serves WBD’s consumer products globally, will present at the ‘CTO Roundtable Unlocking potential: Adopting and adapting the new tools of the trade’ IBC2025 session on 12 September.
Before joining Discovery in 2019, Saxena served as the Vice President (VP) of Technology for Amazon Marketplace and held leadership roles at Microsoft as well as several internet infrastructure startups. Throughout his career, he has created content delivery networks (CDNs) and other technologies to transform how businesses leverage internet technology.
“I see the industry drastically evolving over the last five years. It's undergoing a huge generational transformation shaped by technology, consumer behaviour, and business models.”
Whilst describing the Everything Everywhere All at Once situation that media companies find themselves battling as “highly volatile but innovative,” Saxena still chooses to emphasise the positive. He says: “For all the challenges that the media industry faces, the response has opened up so many opportunities for companies to innovate.”
Business model
For this CTO, in particular, there are three macro challenges which he must stay on top of. The first is business economics.
“Cord-cutting is accelerating, but traditional media remains the major revenue driver for most [legacy] companies in this space. More consumers are shifting to streaming, and that's changing the economics for everything. So, how do you balance investments between the two? How do you balance advertising between the two? Every company is struggling with that.”
Following the lead of Amazon and Netflix, WBD has pursued international expansion over the last two years. As a result, HBO Max is now in over 19 countries and nearly 30 languages, with more territory launches on the way.
“Our focus is to replace declining linear TV revenue and be where our consumers are – on connected TVs, mobile devices, and set-top boxes (STBs). They provide hundreds of platforms in hundreds of countries. That's consideration number one.”
Corporate restructure
Number two in Saxena’s in-tray is managing WBD’s corporate separation, which was announced earlier this year and is due to take effect mid-2026. This will see the Discovery Global network segment, which houses linear businesses and brands like CNN, TNT Sports, and Discovery, separated from a Warner Bros. division of movie properties, including DC Studios and streaming service HBO Max.
“This is a very hard problem because over the past few years we have taken every effort to bring this together,” he says of the work to unify operations post-merger. “It's not only us. For example, Comcast recently spun off its cable networks into a separate company from NBC broadcast and streamer Peacock. I wouldn't be surprised if other media companies also start to do that in the coming years.”
Surgical AI
The third macro trend is, inevitably, AI.
“Nobody can have this conversation without talking about genAI. It is changing the world at a pace I’ve never seen before. Whether it is employee productivity, operational productivity or consumer experiences, genAI is shaping the future. We are spending a ton of time trying to keep up with that and work out how we use genAI effectively in media. Across every aspect of the company and every aspect of the product, genAI has been massively disruptive. We have embraced that, and we are working a lot in that space.”
For example, WBD is currently augmenting conventional hard metadata – details about movie titles, actors, release years and so on – with scene-level metadata.
“This enables us to show contextual ads,” Saxena explains. “When you're watching a scene in an action film about a car race, you want to show the audience a different ad than if it’s a breakfast scene in a romcom.”
According to Saxena, similar scene-level or sentiment analysis of content can be used to better personalise recommendations.
“We want users to be able to do semantic searches,” he explains. “Right now, we all use lexical searches (keywords), like ‘Show me that movie with the title or the actor's name’, which is based on hard attributes. We want you to be able to search for content in a very conversational way, like: ‘Show me a modern movie about World War II set in France.’ To do that, you need to use genAI.”
A third practical application of AI is to scale subtitling. Technology built on Google’s Vertex AI development platform can automatically convert video content into text. This solution is set to make HBO Max’s captions more accurate. The new tool cuts costs relating to generating captions by up to 50%, while creating new file captions can also take up to 80% less time.
“If we did 10 languages before, now we can do 20 languages without blowing up the cost or taking two years to do it. We are using genAI in very carefully chosen approaches where it makes sense and helps the company, but still keeps the core of our business safe.”
What about using genAI for final pixel content creation?
“That, for me, is the biggest dilemma,” he says. “Warner Bros. are a content company. We build around content creators. We have intellectual property rights and actors, and we want to be very respectful of that. In this area, we're moving very cautiously so as not to alienate the bread and butter of this business. We still think genAI is not going to replace talent.”
“GenAI is slow and expensive, so, particularly in a live environment where consumer experiences have to be real-time, it makes sense to use this technology in a very surgical manner,” he adds.
AI enters sports
On that note, one area that is less obviously touched by AI, yet remains vital to Warner Bros’ survival, is sports. Here too, WBD is employing AI to improve the fan experience. Viewers on services like TNT Sports will see timeline markers to navigate back through the match and see highlights of the best action from before they were watching.
“We cannot have an army of humans tagging live content for every goal, yellow card or record being broken. We use AI to detect key moments. Cues can be based on the tone of a commentator’s voice or spectators’ interactions, not just on computer vision. That's a great application of AI since we can scale that to any sport or country.”
For example, medal alerts during the Paris Olympics coverage alerted fans when a gold medal was about to be won, allowing them to watch the moment and then return to their original stream. Saxena says the company is also developing genAI to enable fans to replay key highlights of live matches just 3-5 seconds behind the live stream.
Engineering and education
Saxena is responsible for WBD operations across Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Ottawa, London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Budapest, India, and many other global locations. With technology changing so rapidly, one has to wonder how anyone in his position could possibly stay abreast of all the issues with sufficient confidence to also steer the ship.
“I'm an engineer at heart,” he says. “I like to stay in touch with every technological innovation. Every day, there is big breaking news about AI, a new model, a new feature, a new company, etc. One thing I've found to be very useful is what I call the ‘growth mindset’. Everybody has to figure out how they learn.”
He elaborates, “I have never in my life learned at the pace I am learning today. I bought more books in 2025 than I did when I was studying Computer Science at [University of Texas, Dallas]. I have my sources: certain blog posts, research papers. I also talk to people –a lot. I have more social interactions today with other CTOs than I used to before AI rose to prominence. I also talk with Google and OpenAI. In addition, we built a mechanism internally to debate and learn about how AI can impact all parts of our business.”
This is an AI hackathon in which Google and OpenAI participated alongside thousands of WBD employees across all departments to brainstorm ideas.
“It was a great way to distil everything that's going on in the industry and make sure we don't have too many blind spots. Some of the ideas that emerged were built as prototypes. It’s been a great driver of awareness for those inside the company about what's happening in the industry. It got such great employee engagement that we’re doing another one before the end of the year.”
Saxena has also created AI-centric verticals. For example, there is a team whose job is only to focus on how AI can localise content.
“AI is not being used as a general tool. We have very surgical programs based on product, personalisation and recommendation. This verticalisation helps us go pretty deep with the technology.”
There’s no doubting the enthusiasm with which Saxena approaches the challenge. It’s a philosophy he instils in his team.
“There is a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt around AI. I tell them to approach AI with curiosity, not fear. The ability to cope with changes and transform businesses has become very important.”
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