The Media League’s Thierry Fautier Talks Gen AI and Widening Streaming’s Scope at Streaming Media 2025
The Media League co-founder Thierry Fautier joins Streaming Media contributing editor Timothy Fore-Siglin at Streaming Media 2025 for a reality check on the use, application, and regulation of generative AI in the streaming world as experienced at The Media League. Fautier advocates for a balanced approach to technology adoption, considering both cost efficiency and the expansion of services to a global audience.
AI as a Universe Expander
Fore-Siglin and Fautier begin their conversation by appreciating the laid-back nature of the Streaming Media conference, where people have time to sit together and have deep conversations. Fautier calls IBC a nightmare because of how rushed it feels, but he acknowledges that the industry needs both high-intensity experiences and smaller experiences.
Fore-Siglin asks Fautier to talk about his current focus, so Fautier introduces his new company, The Media League, a media and entertainment business consulting agency for technology companies. The company is engaged with AI; it organized a SundAI breakfast at IBC, “where we would gather 50 individuals in the room and could start to demystify what is AI, who is using it, why they use it, what are the use cases, [and] what do you think the industry is going to develop over time?” he shares.
Fautier brings up a Streaming Media panel on subtitling and dubbing, when someone said AI “solved it.” But “the guy in the operation room” is saying “it’s not solved. We still need to have human [input], we need to be compliant, we need to make sure for this type of delivery network we are okay, [and] for this other type, we are not okay. So that’s what the industry needs to figure out. There is not one size fits all. There are many shoes, many fits,” Fautier asserts.
He continues, “And hopefully it’s not only about cutting costs, it’s also about widening the scope. If you say … you can do dubbing for five languages, how about the 125 remaining? If you can dub it with the best effort, good enough quality, people will love it.”
AI is “also about expanding your universe,” he reiterates. It’s important to ask, “How can we change the very well-defined workflow we had until now?”
A Proposal to Go Back to Regulators
“Now, technically, we’ve been able to do a number of things for years and you mentioned dubbing is one thing,” Fore-Siglin says. “Having worked with the World Trade Center and having to of course hire numbers of real-time translators, I look at that as a potential opportunity. And yet you have things like Apple not doing the real-time translation in Europe because of the GDPR issues and some of the legal framework. So as we solve this technical side, where does the industry go to engage around the legal ramifications of it?”
Fautier provides this example: “I am French and I spend some time with the France Televisions project, where they have decided to go their own way because they couldn’t find any type of technology that can fix their needs. So they did a homegrown system.”
“Kind of like SEACAM back in the day,” Fore-Siglin notes.
Fautier says he heard a conference speaker who concluded, “Now that we have a good understanding of the technology, we should go back to the regulators and tell them [we] wanted to have universal service. Stop these crazy requirements; we can’t meet them.”
Fautier continues, “But if the quality of translation is bad, this has a huge impact. So we need also to put some guardrails—like any politician, prime minister, president, you need to have some oversight. Commentators of a soccer match, yes, maybe you can be loose, but … I know we have a president of the United States who speaks a lot. Maybe we should say, ‘Can we check the tweets? Can we match the tweet with the talk because the guy says a lot of things and keeps changing his opinion.’ So I think there is an opportunity for technology to go back to regulators.” He believes this is possible because there is so much data now.
‘The Internet Is the Limit’
Fore-Siglin ties this proposal to “the days of codecs.” He continues, “We of course used H.264 for video conferencing long before it became a streaming standard. But the simple fact that you had MPEG and ITU says we need something that’s universal across the board. And then we watched how the industry grew dramatically. So to your point, I think that’s very well taken, going back not just to the regulators, but to the standards bodies and saying, Here’s how we can get something. Because you don’t want to be sitting in France and then go to DRC and your translation doesn’t work, especially if it’s … slightly different versions of French.”
Fautier adds that technology companies want to sell worldwide, so this makes sense. He returns to the subject of subtitling and a challenge that operators face today: “You can do [subtitling] on the FAST channel and say on the fly, ‘I can tell you exactly for all the different languages, I can do it on the fly because I have a niche market.’ But guess what, you can do that on the set-top box ... from ABC. And what is interesting is that you talk to a chip company [that] says, ‘Yes, I can do it here.’ You talk to hyperscale [and] they say, ‘No, I have to do it there.’ And the content provider says, ‘No, no, no guys, you are wrong, it has to be done here.’ So we need to orchestrate all those different elements of the workflow and say, ‘Yes, we can do it in a different way.’ But people need to talk. Today they all keep their cards very close to their chest.”
Fore-Siglin adds, “And then you think about the satellite companies back to Eutelsat, Intelsat, et cetera, where they had to build SAP in early on for those alternate channels. You literally, because of the hardware constraints, could only do three different alternate channels of audio. Now we’re talking about, at a minimum, 20 different channels.”
Fautier sums up this discussion by saying, “The internet is the limit.” Alternate audios are available at both cheap and premium levels, and with all of the technology available, operators should be making “wise choices on what technology to apply for, what quality or service, and of course what price.”
Join us December 9-11 and tune in for more great conversations at Streaming Media Connect! Registration is free and open now!
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