As AI makes its way into the entertainment sphere, Xperi-owned TiVo has introduced an AI agent designed to make it easier for consumers to discover relevant TV and streaming entertainment via conversational prompts.
Dubbed Agent TiVo, the experience combines large language models (LLMs) with TiVo’s existing voice technology. The company noted this pairing is done in a hybrid architecture that intelligently routes user entertainment queries to the most appropriate models, which TiVo says helps reduce costs and latency related to introducing LLM-based conversational experiences.
From a consumer perspective the new Agent TiVo lets viewers interact more naturally with entertainment platforms and services. The idea is that they can more easily find and discover content via voice or text through conversational questions, like “what’s something we can watch together as a family?”
TiVo touts this as going beyond traditional voice commands and keyword-based searches, as viewers can ask questions, refine results with follow-up prompts or conversation, and then receive more personalized recommendations based on their specific interests. TiVo’s agent also provides viewers with explanations as to why certain content was recommended, which is meant to help give them greater confidence in selecting a title that’s relevant and something they want to watch.
Agent TiVo lets viewers search across a broad range of queries or content attributes, such as mood, genre, actor, quotes, episodes, sports teams, source, availability or other criteria. And it learns through the conversation, allowing users to narrow options or explore alternatives to help deliver more tailored recommendations.
“Entertainment choices have expanded dramatically, making content discovery increasingly complex for viewers," said Kevin Lenhart, general manager of pay TV at Xperi, in a statement. "Agent TiVo combines conversational AI with TiVo's proven voice, discovery and personalization expertise to deliver an experience built specifically for entertainment. The result is a faster, more personalized experience that helps viewers spend less time searching and more time watching, while giving operators and entertainment platforms a powerful new way to deepen engagement."
Wading through a broad and fragmented sea of content options to land on something to watch is understood to be a viewer challenge in streaming TV. Per Gracenote data, in the U.S. it takes consumers 12 minutes on average to find something to watch. It’s one of the aspects that AI and agents like those from TiVo, in part, aim to help address. TiVo’s not only leaning into new tech, but shifting consumer behaviors as people are increasingly using AI conversational platforms or chatbots (a la ChatGPT) for queries, including entertainment. Keep reading for more on that.
TiVo touts agent advantages for AI discovery, LLM-based conversation layer
Some of the advantages that TiVo touts for its agents over other options include the hybrid architecture using LLMs and the intelligent model routing that helps deliver the conversational experience, which the company claims helps avoid expense, risk and complexity of an LLM-only approach for operators and platforms.
TiVo – one of the more independent players working to gain ground in the TVOS space both in the U.S. but largely deployed with smart TV makers abroad at this point- also offers seamless integration to extend existing TiVo deployments without major platform changes.
As an indie player TiVo also offers a fully white-labeled version of Agent TiVo to reflect each operator’s brand and content strategy.
Another key factor for Agent TiVo is that it’s specifically built for entertainment queries and experiences, meaning not relying on general-purpose AI.
We’ve written before about CTV contemplating the so-called AI-powered agentic CTV conversational layer for content discovery and other experiences. It’s one where streaming TV device platforms such as Google TV, Roku and others are bringing in AI tech and voice technology capabilities both for search or discovery purposes, as well as laying the groundwork for new interactive and more conversational back-and-forth experiences between viewers and their TV screens.
But this AI-powered conversational layer notion for CTV is also one where those like Nielsen-owned metadata provider Gracenote have previously explained some LLM-based shortcomings for entertainment experiences, like knowledge lock (as a result of not having access to data outside of their model training windows) and hallucinations or AI delivering responses that are not truthful or accurate. It’s one of the vendors working to address these with its own data tools meant to help ground LLM-based content discovery responses and ensure validated, up-to-date and accurate information about content for CTV and streaming purposes (read more on that here). Samsung was the latest smart TV maker to tap Gracenote for AI-powered CTV initiatives, following an earlier deal with Google.
Others have also made efforts to leverage AI and natural conversation to help ease content discovery and boost user engagement, such as AI-powered CineSearch from Cineverse, for example.
Consumers tap AI chatbots for content queries
TiVo’s new agent comes as separate earlier survey data showing a rise in use of AI chatbots at large among U.S. consumers suggests shifts could be on the horizon for CTV content search and discovery.
Per Gracenote’s 2026 GenAI usage study, consumers across generations are leaning into AI chatbots like ChatGPT , and many are already using them to find or discover entertainment and sports content and get recommendations.
Gracenote found young consumers, particularly Gen Alphas, are tapping AI chatbots as their preferred source for recommendations on TV shows and movies to watch. Nearly half (49%) of Gen Alphas age 13-14 surveyed named AI chatbots as the best source of TV and movie recommendations, outpacing streaming and cable user interfaces and program guides (41%) and internet search engine results (11%).
And multiple generations are already using AI chatbots for content recommendations. About 38% of Gen Z report using AI for that purpose, rising to 41% among Millennials and standing at 32% among Gen X. The entertainment reason each of those three generations tap AI chatbots for most is to find out where a program or a game is playing: Gen Z (39%), Millennials (45%) and Gen X (34%) – speaking to the fragmentation frustration, particularly among sports fans.
Across the study, AI chatbots were trusted most for TV and movie recommendations and for helping users find TV, movie and sports programming, at about a quarter of respondents each.