AI Becomes a Core Engine of the Global Media Factory
Industry leaders say artificial intelligence has moved beyond experimentation and is now a production-scale tool reshaping how media is created and delivered. Experts are increasingly pointing to the advantages of AI in creative media. For Dmitry Mednikov, managing director of Russkaya Media Gruppa (Russian Media Group), AI has become a practical, industrial-scale tool for the industry.
At the congress Tochki rosta v biznese (Growth Points in Business), during a session titled “The Consumer as a Source of Growth: How Technology Creates Competitive Value,” participants discussed AI’s role in modern media. Mednikov explained why the industry needs AI and how it supports high-volume content production.
What Has AI Changed?
Neural networks are already driving a noticeable increase in productivity while opening the door to deeper content personalization. “In media, even the most talented creator can produce only a limited amount of content, and that limit cannot be multiplied. Neural networks have pushed productivity to a fundamentally new level. AI has helped us better understand our audience and introduced new production capabilities, allowing routine tasks to be handled by machines,” Mednikov says.
At the same time, industry professionals agree that AI cannot fully replace human creators and is not designed to do so. Humans remain the source of original, distinctive work. But consumption patterns have shifted. Audiences now demand far more content than human teams alone can supply. To meet that demand, media companies are turning to AI. Neural networks have enabled pipeline-style production, and the future of the media sector increasingly depends on how these tools evolve.
AI is also reshaping how content is consumed. Instead of browsing everything, users are more likely to see only what matches their interests. AI analyzes what each user wants to watch and when, then delivers more relevant recommendations.
From Skepticism to Adoption
Across Russia, AI adoption is accelerating, rising from 20% in 2021 to 43% in 2024. Industry discussions and expert commentary suggest AI is no longer seen as experimental. It has become a working tool, one that professionals now consider essential for future growth.
That shift is expected to boost productivity across creative industries, accelerate digital transformation in media and advertising, and drive demand for domestic AI infrastructure, including models, data centers, analytics platforms, computer vision, NLP, and recommendation systems. Russkaya Media Gruppa already links further scaling of these practices to increased investment in infrastructure and data centers.
Personalization of Media Consumption
As AI tools mature, they are giving audiences more precise content recommendations and a more tailored media consumption experience. Russkaya Media Gruppa has been using AI extensively, and Mednikov’s claims were backed by a live demonstration of an automated video processing system.
Immediately after the session, participants received a personalized media package via a link, generated using machine learning. Within about 20 minutes, AI processed recordings of the discussion. Computer vision and natural language processing algorithms selected the best images and quotes. Participants received ready-to-publish video clips optimized for social media and messaging platforms. The system is already in active use at Russkaya Media Gruppa.
AI is also being deployed in areas where cost savings are more visible. In October 2025, the company reported generating promotional images of celebrities for the Golden Gramophone campaign using AI instead of traditional photography. In this case, AI acts as a production tool for commercial visual content, reducing both cost and production time.
Other media players are moving in the same direction. VK Video is strengthening recommendation personalization using AI, relying on deep content understanding technologies such as Discovery. AI is not only speeding up content production but also improving how accurately it reaches target audiences. That makes AI adoption a clear competitive advantage.
The Need for Shared Rules
Russian media companies are shifting from experimenting with AI to building production pipelines around it. In this model, AI handles speed, routine tasks, analytics, segmentation, and packaging, while humans focus on meaning and creative direction.
Experts expect continued development of AI tools that deliver measurable business impact, especially in content personalization, recommendation systems, and audience response analytics. “In effect, by using analytics and generative capabilities of neural networks, consumers can communicate their preferences to us, while we gain the ability to respond to those preferences and build a technological chain for personalization,” Mednikov says.
The media industry is approaching a point where shared standards and rules for AI use are essential. These frameworks will not only shape the media market but also support the broader IT sector that supplies technology to businesses.
