For decades, storytelling in the entertainment industry has operated within a relatively fixed structure—create content, distribute it through established channels, and hope audiences connect with it. But just as streaming technology upended the traditional cable model, artificial intelligence is now transforming how stories are conceived, produced, and delivered.
“This industry is 1000% resistant to any change, at all, period. It literally takes an act of God or a force majeure for something to make them change,” says Dan Goman, founder and CEO of Ateliere Creative Technologies. Despite this resistance, the media landscape is undergoing a profound evolution, with AI-driven tools reshaping creative workflows and automation empowering storytellers in unprecedented ways.
AI’s Integration Into Creative Workflows
The traditional media production pipeline is notoriously fragmented, with disconnected processes that slow down creation and limit innovation. Goman, who began his career in software development before founding Ateliere, has positioned his company at the forefront of these changes by developing cloud-native solutions that streamline media workflows through AI integration.
“Operating a digital streaming service was new at the time,” Goman explains, reflecting on Ateliere’s early days. “Every content company was struggling with the lack of robust streaming technology solutions. Operating a streaming content service is very capital intensive, and our initial venture didn’t see significant success.”
This realization led to a pivotal moment. Rather than continuing down an unsustainable path, Goman made the decision to shift Ateliere’s focus from content creation to technology development—specifically, building a proprietary platform designed to address the inefficiencies plaguing media production and distribution.
“We kept wasting money with antiquated technology not designed for digital first,” said Goman. “But we decided to stop throwing money away and build our own tech team and technology.”
This strategic pivot exemplifies the kind of adaptability that separates successful businesses from those that fail to evolve. By recognizing Ateliere’s core competency in technological innovation rather than content creation, Goman positioned the company to solve larger industry challenges through AI-powered automation.
Breaking Down Silos Through Intelligent Automation
One of the most significant barriers to creativity in media production has been the persistence of operational silos. As Goman points out, “Media workflows are often fragmented, with production, post-production, distribution, and storage managed by different teams using disparate systems.”
These disconnected processes not only slow down content creation but also make it difficult to implement comprehensive changes or track operations across the entire supply chain. Ateliere’s cloud-native solutions, particularly Ateliere Connect, address this fragmentation by unifying various stages of production and distribution through AI-driven tools.
The platform’s FrameDNA™ technology, for example, uses AI to identify and eliminate redundant content across media libraries, significantly reducing storage requirements and associated costs. This not only streamlines operations but also has meaningful environmental implications, as redundant storage across multiple servers creates unnecessary energy consumption.
“Platforms with extensive content catalogs often encounter escalating storage expenses, but these systems can lower cloud storage costs by as much as 90%,” notes Goman, highlighting the dual benefit of improved efficiency and reduced environmental impact.
AI as Creative Enabler, Not Replacement
The narrative around AI in creative fields often centers on fear—the concern that automated systems will replace human artists and storytellers. However, Goman’s vision for AI in media production is fundamentally collaborative, focusing on how intelligent automation can enhance human creativity rather than supplant it.
By automating routine tasks like content tagging, localization, and quality control, AI tools free creative professionals to focus on the aspects of storytelling that truly require human insight and emotional intelligence. This shift represents not a diminishment of human contribution but rather an evolution in how creative teams work.
Consider the process of creating content for global audiences. Traditionally, localizing a film or series for different markets required extensive manual effort, from translation and dubbing to cultural adaptation. AI-powered tools can now automate many of these processes, analyzing cultural nuances and generating localized versions that maintain the core emotional impact of the original content.
“Every action you take feeds back into an invisible system, learning your preferences and adjusting what it offers,” Dan explains, describing how AI systems learn and adapt. This capability extends beyond audience analytics to the creative process itself, where AI can help storytellers understand how different narrative choices might resonate with specific audiences.
Written in partnership with Tom White
