Scale, survival and the AI question: Nordic industry voices take stock at MIPCOM

Nordic industry voices at the MIPCOM television market weighed in on how AI is reshaping the content business. The material comes from a report on Nordisk Film & TV Fond's conversations at the event, and what survives is a handful of remarks rather than a full account of the sessions.

Guy Bisson, Research Director and co-founder of Ampere Analysis, framed AI as geopolitical. "It is very clear that AI is the new Cold War," he said, describing a contest between China and the USA. In his view the technology will drive not only the TV industry but every industry over the next ten to twenty years. He noted that major technology companies are investing both in their own systems and in smaller AI companies.

Bisson also said the creator economy and microdramas may be disrupted first, because content in those areas can be produced rapidly and markets can be flooded with it.

Andy Fry, a reporter for MIPCOM Daily News, summarised a closing-session point about rights and ethics. Some producers, he said, are making a lot of money by digging up old material that has had no TV value for a long time and handing it to an AI company for training. Producers therefore have to decide for themselves whether they want to do that, which he called an ethical question. Another speaker offered a blunt view of the technology: "It's a tool, and it's not going anywhere."

The remarks show how the Nordic industry is approaching AI: as a lasting, strategically important technology that is likely to hit fast-produced formats first and that gives producers a choice about licensing their back catalogues for training.