JioStar has added an AI conversational assistant to JioHotstar, letting viewers find movies, shows, live-sports moments and cricket statistics with natural-language requests.

Built with OpenAI’s API and Codex in eight weeks, the assistant supports more than 15 languages and serves a platform with over 500 million monthly users.

Viewers can also describe nuanced preferences, such as choosing something to match their mood, and a report cited in the article says more than 60% of users have opted for voice search over text.

The platform is designed for major traffic spikes: it has handled as many as 72.5 million concurrent live-sports viewers and nearly 5 million subscription requests per minute at peak.

JioStar’s Bharath Ram said conversational search can help viewers discover content they might otherwise miss, boosting engagement and watch time while supporting monetization and potentially informing content production through audience feedback.

Vijay Seshadri said successful AI deployment requires balancing speed with accuracy, alongside focused teams, scalability and user-centered design.