On September 26, 2023, Tubi announced Rabbit AI, a GPT-4-powered content-discovery feature. It aimed to help viewers search with conversational requests, such as comedies with an unexpected twist or high-school-themed horror films, rather than only titles or genres.
The vast library of Tubi often presents a challenge for viewers, who can find themselves endlessly scrolling through options without settling on a choice. With Rabbit AI, Tubi aims to streamline this process, helping viewers explore titles that might match their interests.
Conversational movie recommendations were not an entirely new concept. What distinguished the announced Rabbit AI integration was its focus on finding titles in Tubi’s own catalog. A catalog-based design should not be treated as proof that every generated recommendation or description is accurate.
Blake Bassett, then Tubi’s Senior Director of Product, highlighted the power of conversational searches in making the user experience more personalized. Rather than being limited to searching by title, actor, or genre, users can start with a broad idea and refine their preferences over time.
In a launch-era interview reported by The Verge, the idea was to refine a broad request—for example, children’s content about ancient Egypt—toward a narrower preference such as cartoons. This illustrates the intended conversational workflow; it is not a search result independently tested for this article.
Tubi said the feature could also inform its recommendations. The launch release described saving suggested titles to My List and using saving or viewing signals to surface similar content on the home screen. Bassett’s expectation that discovery could improve was a product goal, not a measured benefit established here for all viewers.
Bassett described three types of viewers: those who know exactly what they want, those with a vague idea, and those who are open to suggestions. Rabbit AI was intended to help the latter two categories, especially for viewers who prefer to let the platform guide their viewing choices.
The official September 26 announcement specified a beta rollout to Tubi’s iOS app in the United States, with wider access expected in the following weeks. It said a Rabbit AI plugin for ChatGPT subscribers would be available soon. These launch details are not current installation instructions or evidence that the beta reached two-thirds of Tubi’s entire audience.
Rabbit AI represented an experiment in reducing the time spent searching a large streaming catalog. Whether it improved discovery or viewing time required evidence from actual use; the launch announcement alone did not establish it as the industry’s most effective recommendation engine.
