Canal+ uses OpenAI and Google for AI-powered content recommendation and video production
French media company Canal+ on Wednesday announced multi-year partnerships with Google Cloud and OpenAI to integrate generative artificial intelligence into its production workflows and streaming platform as it seeks to strengthen its competitiveness in the global streaming market.
The agreements aim to enhance Canal+’s technology infrastructure and help the company compete with the advanced recommendation systems used by major streaming platforms such as Netflix. The company is also pursuing an ambitious long-term goal of reaching 100 million subscribers by 2030.
Speaking to Reuters, Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada said the partnerships are designed to complement each other, with Google focusing on extracting and organizing data from the company’s extensive content library while OpenAI’s technology will power improved search and recommendation capabilities to enhance the subscriber experience.
Under the collaboration, the combined technologies will index Canal+’s entire catalogue of films, series and other content. This process will allow the platform to deliver more personalized recommendations to viewers based on deeper contextual analysis of scenes, themes and visual elements within the content.
Canal+ will also provide access to Google’s video generative AI system, Veo 3, for its production teams. The technology will allow creators to pre-visualize scenes before filming or recreate historical moments using archival photographs, potentially improving efficiency during the content development process.
The company plans to introduce an upgraded search and recommendation system beginning in June 2026. Unlike traditional keyword-based searches, the new feature will allow subscribers to make natural-language requests and receive tailored content suggestions generated by artificial intelligence.
Saada explained that Google’s models will help analyze and describe individual elements within movies and television shows, such as characters, settings and scenes. This structured data can then be combined with OpenAI’s models to significantly improve both the search experience and the platform’s recommendation engine.
The AI deployment will initially cover European and African markets where the Canal+ application is available, with the rollout scheduled to begin in June 2026. The company also emphasized that intellectual property protections are built into the partnerships, noting that its rights and content assets will remain securely protected within Google Cloud’s infrastructure.
