The definition of some words is so broad that they almost lose their meaning. In theory, the word “car” can be applied to anything from a $500,000 high performance automobile to a wagon-sized clown vehicle filled with Shriners that you’d see at a circus.

“AI” is another one of those words that is being applied to so many things, it’s almost impossible to understand the context in which it is being used. When the average person hears the word AI, they picture some near-sentient supercomputer that is capable of producing all sorts of magical information.

But more often than not, artificial intelligence isn’t all that intelligent. Certainly not in the way that most people use it. In many cases, what is described as AI is simply using a lot of computational power to extract data in a specific way. The end result is more super search engine than future Skynet.

When the ad-supported free streaming service Tubi announced last week that it had launched a native app within ChatGPT, this is how it was described by the streamer:

“Streaming should feel effortless, and as chatbots and AI agents are becoming a common way people navigate the internet, Tubi is expanding its discovery experience to meet viewers in the moment they’re expressing intent in their own words,” said Mike Bidgoli, Chief Product and Technology officer at Tubi. “At the core of Tubi is a deeply scaled personalization and discovery system, trained on more than 1 billion monthly hours of viewing from over 100 million active users. Recent AI breakthroughs are compounding that advantage, enhancing how Tubi interprets intent, reasons over content, and connects viewers to the right titles faster. This launch brings that system into a conversational interface, making it seamless to go from an idea to the perfect match and content rabbit hole.”

Tubi has always been the place where passionate viewers go deep on their favorite fandoms and find content they can’t get anywhere else. Now, with the launch of the Tubi app inside ChatGPT, that discovery is extending into more of the environments where entertainment decisions are increasingly happening. Users can add Tubi’s app from ChatGPT app store and type “@Tubi” anytime to describe what they’re in the mood for, whether that’s “a movie that feels like a fever dream but isn’t horror” or “a thriller for tonight.” They’ll then receive curated, interactive results that they can watch on Tubi.

Based on that description, you might have assumed that ChatGPT is somehow using its super computational powers to scour Tubi and find the perfect show for users. But as it turns out, ChatGPT is serving more as a superpowered chat agent that is able to efficiently access metadata within Tubi. And that Metadata is provided to Tubi by a third party company, Reelgood, as well as other other partners and Tubi’s own content understanding tools.

I recently spoke with Reelgood CEO David Sanderson and he explained how Tubi and ChatGPT are using his company’s metadata to make that native Tubi work for users:

I spoke with someone recently at Fox, and their ad-supported streamer Tubi is the first streamer to have an app inside ChatGPT that allows viewers to find movies or shows to watch by using conversational phrases. Is that competition for you or do you see that as a complimentary offering?

David Sanderson: Fox and Tubi have been some of our oldest customers. And I think they're awesome flagship customers for us, because what they do with our data is very cool.

So that feature is coming out of the chat experience. But the base layer you need for that to work is again, accurate data. You need to have rich taxonomy for that data, things that describe, "is it about a coming-of-age story?"

It is about having detailed descriptions for that piece of data, accurate data about the synopsis, accurate cast and crew information, all of that stuff. That is the foundational layer to these type of experiences.

The bottom line of this is that a native ChatGPT app wouldn’t work with the metadata provided by Reelgood. AI is good at a lot of things. But as anyone in the streaming industry will tell you, compiling accurate metadata on streaming titles is not one of its strengths.

The Tubi app for ChatGPT is a cool use of technology. But it’s not AI-driven in the way that most people might expect it be.

Update: I added additional context provided by Tubi, which clarifies Tubi’s use of data from both Reelgood, as well as other other partners and Tubi’s own content understanding tools.