Netflix reveals entirely new look – and first features powered by AI

Netflix has revealed a new look, which it says should make it easier to find new things to watch.

The new design on TVs borrows heavily from the previous one. “The new Netflix TV experience is still the one you know and love — just better,” said Netflix’s chief product officer Eunice Kim.

But it simplifies that design as well as providing more information about what people want to watch, as well as offering recommendations that change in real time.

The most obvious change to the design will be a more obvious inclusion of information about a given film or TV show. Now, it will make clear why the video is being recommended – if it has won an award, or is particularly popular at that moment, for instance.

Those recommendations will also be more “responsive to your moods and interests in the moment” and change in real time, the company said.

The company will also make it easier to find the shortcuts to the search option and the “My List” tool where people can save the shows they want to watch in the future.

All of that is included in a new “clean and modern design”, Netflix said.

All of those changes are rolling out in the “coming weeks and months”, Netflix said.

But perhaps the most controversial change will be Netflix’s introduction of generative artificial intelligence features. For now, those are relatively limited.

The first offering will be a search feature on iOS that some users will be asked to opt into. It will allow them to search for shows using normal language: “I need a good cry”, for instance, or “something funny and upbeat”.

But it suggested that similar generative AI tools could be coming to the discovery experience more generally.