Turn commitment into performance
Media and entertainment industry boards have moved faster in adopting AI than those in almost any other industry, according to the latest AI Impact Survey. 87% have already approved significant investments in the technology.
The more complex challenge comes later: turning that commitment into performance in the areas where content is produced, rights are managed, and audience relationships are built. The gap between board approval of investments and execution by operational teams can have business consequences that many organizations have not yet fully assessed.
Media and entertainment industry-specific data from Grant Thornton's AI Impact 2026 survey, conducted with 950 business leaders, reveals an industry that is advancing rapidly in innovation but unevenly in governance. Industry leaders are already reporting real gains in creativity, speed, and quality from AI. However, trade returns are still developing, and accountability and governance mechanisms are not evolving at the same speed.
Board involvement does not reach the operation
the general average.
Organizations in the media and entertainment industry outperform the survey average on all indicators related to board-level governance. 87% of boards approved significant investments in AI, compared to 75% across all industries. In addition, 68% have already incorporated AI-related risks and opportunities into ongoing supervision, compared to 54% of the overall average.
The central question is whether this maturity at the leadership level is reaching studios, streaming platforms, and production operations, where critical decisions involving AI are made on a daily basis.
How boards have been involved in AI strategy
Question: How has the board of directors been involved in the oversight and development of the AI strategy?
In the media and entertainment industry, AI acts directly on essential business assets: content libraries that generate licensing and streaming revenues, contracts with talent that determine how performances can be utilized, and rights structures that define what a studio can market and to whom. Copywriters, editors, post-production teams, and advertising operations professionals work with these assets on a daily basis.
The 54% of respondents in the media and entertainment industry identified frontline professionals as the group most in need of support for AI adoption, the highest percentage recorded among all industries surveyed and 17 percentage points above the market average. In addition, 48% point to the shortage of talent and the need for training as the main barrier to scaling AI, a rate 13 points above the general average.
Supporting frontline workers is a critical need
Question: Which area of the organization currently needs the most support to adopt AI-enabled ways of working?
The adoption of AI in the media and entertainment industry faces challenges related to implementation, not just enablement. Writers, editors, and production teams need to understand how AI uses and processes the content they work with on a daily basis, and not just learn how to operate the tools. When AI models use copyrighted materials, intellectual property risks arise. Similarly, when the results generated by the technology violate union agreements or contracts with talent, the responsibility remains with the organization, regardless of the solution provider.
This understanding requires the development of specific workflows for each role. While the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), which regulates financial disclosure, approval controls, and audit trails for publicly traded companies, is the industry's primary compliance legal framework, the greatest exposure to governance in media and entertainment is related to the protection of intellectual property and content usage rights. When these controls fail, the consequences can include lawsuits, lost revenue, and significant reputational damage.
Liability does not come along with the vendor contract
Across the survey, nearly one in three organizations are choosing to purchase AI solutions rather than building them in-house. Among respondents in the media and entertainment industry, data indicative of financial areas are in line with or above this trend. The logic is understandable: tools developed by third parties evolve faster than most organizations could replicate internally, and their acquisition significantly speeds implementation.
Increasingly, media and entertainment companies are moving beyond simply acquiring tools to acquiring organizations that already have AI-trained production capabilities. This strategy allows you to accelerate the deployment of the technology and scale it up faster than would be possible through in-house development.
Industry analysts project more than $80 billion in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions in the media and entertainment industry by 2026, with AI capabilities among the key factors motivating these transactions.
The approach allows you to accelerate production flows, improve the quality of results, and expand the adoption of technology without requiring organizations to rebuild their entire infrastructure from scratch. However, the responsibility for the governance, risks, and outcomes associated with AI remains with the organization, regardless of whether the technology has been acquired or developed in-house.
Industries are accelerating the acquisition of AI skills
Question: What is your organization's predominant strategy for AI solutions this year?
The speed of this adoption brings responsibilities that strategies focused on the acquisition of solutions do not automatically solve. When third-party tools use content without proper licensing or resort to protected files, the responsibility often lies with the organization implementing the technology, not the vendor. Recent legal disputes in the industry have been testing the limits of this liability, with media companies suing AI providers for unauthorized use of content. At the same time, licensing agreements between publishers and AI platforms demonstrate that organizations that take a proactive approach to accountability and usage rights are building more sustainable models to scale AI with confidence.
Most media and entertainment organizations have not yet developed the controls framework necessary for a strategy based on procurement solutions. This includes policies to define how AI vendors can use content, monitoring mechanisms capable of identifying copyright-related risks, and documented evidence that governance is effectively integrated into workflows.
In the AI Impact 2026 survey, governance and compliance failures appear as the leading cause of poor performance of AI initiatives. In the media and entertainment industry, these risks manifest themselves through rights agreements, talent contracts, and union rules that can be violated by AI-based workflows without this being immediately noticed. Organizations that have implemented AI tools quickly, without setting clear liability boundaries, risk provoking unintentional intellectual property infringements, potentially resulting in costly litigation and relevant financial impacts.
Agency-like AI is advancing faster than controls
According to the survey, 17% of organizations in the media and entertainment industry say that acentric AI is already fully integrated into their corporate workflows, almost double the average observed in the survey. However, governance over what these systems do and how to respond when their behaviors deviate from what is expected has not yet evolved at the same pace as adoption.
Studios and production companies already use AI-based tools with a high degree of autonomy for activities such as production planning, schedule management, and the generation of scene alternatives. One of the most visible examples is the use of AI-created talents. The virtual character Tilly Norwood, created by artificial intelligence, has been presented to perform functions that would previously have required the hiring of artists and the rights structure associated with these contracts.
In response, the SAG-AFTRA union alleged that the character's creator used the work of unionized professionals to train the model without consent. The case illustrates how the advancement of agent-AI is broadening debates on image rights, intellectual property, consent, and liability, topics that the industry will need to address through more robust governance and control structures.
Media & Entertainment Leads Adoption of Agentic AI
Question: At what stage is the adoption of agentic (autonomous) AI in your organization?
According to the survey, 17% of organizations in the media and entertainment industry say that acentric AI is already fully integrated into their corporate workflows, almost double the average observed in the survey. However, governance over what these systems do and how to respond when their behaviors deviate from what is expected has not yet evolved at the same pace as adoption.
Studios and production companies already use AI-based tools with a high degree of autonomy for activities such as production planning, schedule management, and the generation of scene alternatives. One of the most visible examples is the use of AI-created talents. The virtual character Tilly Norwood, created by artificial intelligence, has been presented to perform functions that would previously have required the hiring of artists and the rights structure associated with these contracts.
In response, the SAG-AFTRA union alleged that the character's creator used the work of unionized professionals to train the model without consent. The case illustrates how the advancement of agent-AI is broadening debates on image rights, intellectual property, consent, and liability, topics that the industry will need to address through more robust governance and control structures.
Media & Entertainment Leads Adoption of Agentic AI
Question: At what stage is the adoption of agentic (autonomous) AI in your organization?
The media and entertainment industry's concern differs significantly from that observed in the rest of the survey. Across all industries, regulatory and compliance uncertainty is named as the top concern related to agency AI, with 44% of responses. In the media and entertainment industry, this rate is 34%, in part because the sector operates under a less stringent regulatory environment than industries such as banking and insurance, where formal compliance structures play a central role.
However, when agencyal workflows automate content recommendations, ad placement, or personalization of streaming experiences at scale, the risks of brand damage or rights violations grow at the same speed as implementation. In the media and entertainment industry, governance mechanisms are predominantly contractual and reputational, which makes failures take longer to identify and are more difficult to contain when they occur.
The window to strengthen governance is narrowing
Media and entertainment industry organizations that are building sustainable outcomes with AI are clear about where the technology is used, who reviews its outputs before they reach audiences, and how innovation connects to the indicators that fund the business, such as viewership, ad revenue, streaming performance, and production efficiency.
- Establish responsibilities for AI that acts on rights-sensitive
assets For each AI solution used in content production, recommendation on streaming platforms, advertising or talent management, it is essential to define who is responsible for the results when something does not happen as expected.
In the media and entertainment industry, the accountability framework should reflect the business value of the assets that may be impacted. - Develop workflows, not just training
programs 54% of respondents in the media and entertainment industry say frontline workers are the group that most needs support to adopt AI.
Training, by itself, does not solve the problem. Organizations need to define which functions use AI, in which activities, which decisions require human review before results reach production, and how writers, editors, and post-production teams should work with copyright-sensitive content. - Connect AI to the indicators that underpin the business
The media and entertainment industry excels in accelerated innovation, but still makes more limited strides in revenue growth and cost reduction.
This gap tends to narrow as initiatives such as AI-powered restoration of collections, acceleration of post-production processes, and personalization of streaming experiences are converted into concrete business results. Organizations must identify exactly where AI operates and create measurement mechanisms that make its contribution visible, verifiable, and bankable.
For media and entertainment companies seeking growth through acquisitions, AI governance cannot be treated as an afterthought or just a centralized policy. Grant Thornton works with industry organisations and M&A teams to assess how AI operates in rights-sensitive workflows, where accountability gaps exist, and what controls need to evolve alongside new capabilities acquired.
We support leaders in transforming AI ambition into execution-ready controls, integration plans, and value metrics that track the transaction from the start. Discover how to identify your organization's top AI risks and opportunities with a targeted assessment that aligns with your growth strategy.
Methodology
Between February 23 and March 18, 2026, Grant Thornton surveyed 950 business leaders, including CFOs, CIOs/CITOs, COOs, vice presidents, department leaders, and directors reporting directly to senior management.
The media and entertainment industry-specific group was made up of 100 respondents. The analyses and conclusions regarding specific functions within this sample should be interpreted as indicative of the direction of the observed trends.