Artificial intelligence (AI), as one of the most promising technologies that may reshape the media industry, is drawing more attention in both industry and academia. Presently, the media and AI technology are embracing each other at a rapid pace. However, studies on the interaction between the two subjects are lagging. It’s critical to explore the mechanism behind the adoption of AI in the media industry. Therefore, this research tried to answer: 1）what are the main factors that influence the media firms to adopt AI; and 2）how will the media firms trade off those factors for decision making?
The boundaries of the media industry as well as media firms are presently disappearing. Media firms are becoming organizers of public, media-based communication and therefore could be categorized into 6 types: 1) Newspaper; 2) Radio &TV; 3) Movie; 4) Publication; 5) Game; 6) Internet platform. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence covers eight main disciplines: 1) machine learning; 2) deep learning neural work; 3) rules-based systems; 4) natural language processing; 5) Computer vision; 6) Speech recognition; 7) robotic process automation, and 8) robots.
Most studies on the adoption of AI technology are concentrated in fields of agriculture, the bio-medical industry, and computer networking. The few studies on media industry still neglected to observe the reasons and mechanism for adoption of AI in the whole media industry. This research made theoretical contribution by discovering appropriate influential variables in integration of AI technology and media firms, to supplement, develop and update theoretical frames for technology adoption. It can help the media industry discover the factors that influence the adoption of AI, further discover the inner combination mechanism between the industry and technology, and therefore promote the recognition, acceptance and adoption of AI.
This study, borrowing insights from other theories, mainly followed a quantitative and empirical way under the frame of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). In this theoretic frame, the intention of technology adoption in media industry is determined by the media firm’s perceived ease of use (PEU) and perceived usefulness (PU), both of which are influenced by external variables:1)technological ones including technological difficulty, adoption cost, task fit, and effect demonstrability; 2)organizational ones including organization attribute, structures, innovation and openness, resource richness, and technology experience; and 3)environmental ones including law and regulations, social norms, communication channels, policy support, competition and users’ demand.
In-depth interviews and focus groups were firstly conducted among 30 media firms to pretest and adjust the model, followed by surveys on around 150 managers of media firms in Beijing, China to test the hypothesis under the adjusted model. It was found that 1) Difficulty and complexity of AI, resource richness, and experience influence the PEU on AI; 2) effect demonstrability of AI, social norms, and user’s demand influenced the PU on AI; and 3) both of PEU and PU in turn influence the adoption intention of AI in media firms.