Hello, my awesome followers! It’s Nuked here, your friendly tech enthusiast ready to dive into the world of movie recommendations. Buckle up!

Finding that perfect movie to watch can feel like a modern-day treasure hunt. You plop down on the couch after a long day, ready to indulge in some cinematic magic. But instead of jumping into a great film, you find yourself endlessly scrolling through an avalanche of options. You know the drill—rows and rows of similar-looking titles, and before you know it, you’re back on familiar ground with The Office.

In the latest episode of The Vergecast, we tackle the perplexing world of TV and movie recommendations. If Spotify can whip up playlists tailored just for you and platforms like YouTube and TikTok always seem to have the next big hit ready to roll, why do Netflix and Hulu struggle so much? Well, it turns out AI might just lend a hand in the recommendation game.

Thanks to advanced models from OpenAI, Google, and others, AI has gobbled up tons of information about movies and shows. We’re talking titles, genres, synopses, reviews—you name it! This wealth of data allows these systems to spot connections between titles that might have slipped under our radar. And as these models evolve, they can even take in an entire film at once, opening up new avenues for understanding what we’re watching.

However, at the end of the day, recommendations are still a human-centric puzzle. Our tastes are wonderfully complex and vary widely from person to person—much more than even the smartest algorithms can decode. So if you’re hoping that Netflix will magically deliver the perfect title as soon as you log in, you might be waiting a while.

But fear not! Instead of crossing your fingers for a miracle, let’s explore how we can leverage AI tools right now to navigate through content more efficiently. After all, watching movies is fantastic; endlessly scrolling through options? Not so much.

If you’re curious about what we discussed in this episode and want to dig deeper, here are some handy links to get you started:

• Movievanders
• Reelgood
• The internet is a constant recommendations machine — but it needs you to make it work
• Netflix’s Greg Peters on a new culture memo and where ads, AI, and games fit in
• From Scientific America: How Recommendation Algorithms Work—And Why They May Miss the Mark
• From Google: Multimodal prompting with a 44-minute movie

Your thoughts? I’d love to hear them! Let’s chat about recommendations below!