AI Search and the New Hot Mess of Hollywood Discovery
‘What to watch’ is a minefield as Literate AI uncovers major biases around stars, Harry Potter and the MCU — and grim fallout for marketing, greenlights and talent
I write 2x a month for paid subscribers. I dove into what AI performer Tilly Norwood means for actors, how AI is threatening other jobs across Hollywood and the impact of Sora 2 and ChatGPT-5 on development and production.
Hollywood has spent the past year so rattled by AI that junior executives now flinch when Siri clears her throat. The town has been consumed with whether AI will replace assistants, writers or the eighth person cc’d on an email. Meanwhile, the real and far more immediate AI threat has been building in plain sight:
How audiences discover what’s worth watching.
Answer engines are the new front door to entertainment — and AI search is taking over as the dominant way audiences access information about what content is popular, which franchises are thriving and which stars actually matter. While execs argue over whether ChatGPT can write a punchline, the algorithm is quietly deciding whether your next sequel even deserves to exist.
Literate AI, a consultancy that helps businesses optimize their content and “narratives” in AI search has been tracking how massive the switch has been. The NYC-based company now works across sports and entertainment, financial services, healthcare and tech businesses and brands — with clients including Jefferies, Cirque du Soleil, Google Fiber and Simon Sports.
Literate’s co-founder and chairman, Mitch Stoller, points out that primary data shows that more than a billion people globally now use generative AI. Sixty-two percent of Americans hit these tools multiple times a week. Two-thirds of corporate directors use AI in their actual board meetings, which explains why half of corporate America now sounds like someone skimmed The Innovator’s Dilemma on TikTok. And more than half of all consumers now consult AI before making purchasing decisions — increasingly including what to watch next.
Which means this: Hollywood’s future may not be shaped by AI-written scripts, but by AI-rewritten discovery. The answers people get when they ask the world’s most powerful oracle what deserves their time. And spoiler: the oracle has opinions — and not much use for yours.
Literate AI’s work has exposed a deeply awkward truth for Hollywood: The algorithms don’t care about your instincts, your insider hunches or the pricey slide deck you forced a junior exec to make. They care about patterns, probabilities and what the world has already eyeballed.
In this new paradigm, people aren’t searching for Hollywood content. They’re asking about it. This shift is simple and seismic:
“Most anticipated movies 2026?”
“Best shows like True Detective?”
“Which franchise will dominate next year?”
These are essentially the start of high-volume conversations. And AI search synthesizes answers that iterate with you and asks you if you want to go deeper on a topic (rather than merely providing lists of links). The ranking logic has changed, the signals have changed, the biases have changed and the winners are determined by engines Hollywood hasn’t even bothered to study.
In today’s column, I’ll tell you:
Which superhero franchises AI search says are fading fast, which one is going strong — and the boy wonder who unexpectedly outranks them all
Why AI search’s information diet is so bizarre — heavy on blogs, Reddit threads and SEO junk — and how that distorts what audiences see
How Literate AI diagnoses and “optimizes” for AI search across multiple platforms — and what Hollywood keeps getting wrong about discovery
Which actors AI still considers bankable, and why stars under 40 barely register unless you force the question
What video-game IP looks like through the lens of AI search — and why it’s treated as Hollywood’s last growth engine
How AI search is about to reshape marketing, development and even greenlighting and what the smartest execs should be doing right now
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