As streaming libraries expand across apps, FAST channels and live television, finding something to watch is becoming an increasingly difficult problem for viewers—and an increasingly important one for CTV platforms. TiVo, a subsidiary of Xperi, has introduced Agent TiVo, a conversational AI experience that lets viewers search, refine recommendations and discover entertainment through natural voice or text interactions.

The television search box has remained surprisingly close to its original design: type a title, actor or keyword, scan the results and choose something to watch.

TiVo wants to make that interaction more like a conversation.

Its new Agent TiVo uses conversational AI to let viewers describe what they want in natural language, ask follow-up questions and refine recommendations without repeatedly rebuilding a search query. The system is designed for television and streaming environments rather than general-purpose AI assistants.

A viewer could ask for something appropriate for a family night, look for a particular actor, describe a mood, search by a quote or ask about a sports team. Agent TiVo can then return recommendations and explain why particular content matches the request.

That shift matters because content discovery is becoming a platform problem, not simply a search problem.

TiVo’s own recent platform developments come as streaming services, FAST channels, live sports and traditional television increasingly coexist on the same screen. At IFA 2026, Xperi said TiVo OS was expanding AI-powered discovery alongside its FAST offering, sports experiences and interactive television capabilities.

Third-party market data reinforces the problem. EMARKETER reported in September that 33.5% of U.S. sports fans spend more than five minutes trying to find a particular sporting event, while 14.2% spend more than 10 minutes. The fragmentation of sports rights across broadcast networks, streaming services and FAST platforms is making discovery harder.

The challenge extends beyond sports. An EMARKETER analysis of CTAM and Hub Entertainment Research found that 68% of viewers make at least some viewing decisions outside dedicated TV apps, while 59% of younger Gen Alpha and Gen Z viewers said TV recommendations do not feel designed for them.

Agent TiVo is designed to address that discovery gap at the platform layer.

Technically, the system combines large language models with TiVo’s existing voice technology in a hybrid architecture. Rather than sending every query through a large language model, Agent TiVo intelligently routes requests to different models, with the stated goal of reducing latency and inference costs.

That architecture is significant for TV operators.

Running conversational AI across a large installed base can create substantial infrastructure costs, particularly when many queries are simple search or navigation requests. A hybrid model-routing strategy could allow operators to reserve more expensive LLM processing for queries that actually require deeper reasoning while using conventional systems for simpler interactions.

TiVo is also positioning Agent TiVo as a white-label capability. Operators and entertainment platforms can maintain their own branding, content strategy and user experience instead of sending viewers to a third-party consumer AI assistant.

That gives the product a different competitive position from Google Gemini, Amazon Alexa or other general-purpose conversational assistants. Agent TiVo is not attempting to become a universal AI agent. Its value proposition is narrower: applying conversational intelligence to entertainment catalogs, recommendations, availability and television navigation.

For CTV operators, that distinction could become important.

Better discovery can increase the likelihood that viewers actually find and watch content, while more contextual recommendations can potentially improve engagement with programming, FAST channels and other inventory. TiVo’s broader platform strategy already positions content discovery, personalization and viewer engagement as core components for smart TV manufacturers and media partners.

The advertising implications are indirect but significant.

CTV platforms increasingly function as gateways between consumers, content providers and advertisers. If conversational discovery changes what viewers watch and how they navigate fragmented content libraries, it can also change the distribution of viewing attention—and consequently the environments in which advertising is delivered.

Xperi has previously positioned TiVo OS as a platform capable of creating monetization opportunities for TV manufacturers, including through CTV advertising.

Agent TiVo therefore fits into a larger transition in connected television: from search interfaces toward intelligent discovery layers.

For enterprise operators, the practical questions will be model costs, response latency, content metadata quality, personalization controls, privacy and integration with existing recommendation systems. The quality of conversational AI ultimately depends not only on the LLM but also on the underlying catalog, availability data and entitlement information.

If TiVo can combine those elements reliably, conversational discovery could become another competitive layer in the increasingly crowded CTV platform market.

Market Landscape

CTV is becoming increasingly fragmented across subscription streaming, FAST, live sports and traditional television. That fragmentation creates a discovery challenge for consumers and a distribution challenge for advertisers.

TiVo competes indirectly with technology ecosystems surrounding Google TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku and other smart-TV platforms, each attempting to control some part of the discovery and viewing journey.

The advertising implications are becoming more important as well. EMARKETER reported that 86% of U.S. media planners would shift more linear TV spending to CTV if show-level targeting were available, while 47% cited limited show- and content-level data as a major barrier to greater CTV investment.

That makes content intelligence increasingly valuable. Platforms that understand what viewers are looking for, what content is available and how audiences navigate programming can become important infrastructure between consumers and the advertising ecosystem.

TiVo’s Agent TiVo addresses the consumer-facing side of that equation, while its broader TiVo OS platform provides the underlying TV environment.

Top Insights

• Agent TiVo brings conversational AI to CTV discovery, allowing viewers to search by natural language, refine recommendations and move from discovery toward viewing.
• Its hybrid LLM architecture targets cost and latency, giving operators an alternative to running every entertainment query through expensive general-purpose AI models.
• Content fragmentation is making discovery harder, particularly for live sports, where viewers increasingly search across multiple broadcast and streaming platforms.
• White-label deployment gives operators brand control, allowing TiVo partners to introduce conversational discovery without handing the entire viewer relationship to a consumer AI platform.
• Better discovery could influence CTV monetization, because recommendation systems increasingly determine which content, channels and advertising environments receive viewer attention.

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