National, February 19th 2026: For more than a decade, digital entertainment has been a one-way street: you browse, you click, you watch. Today, JioHotstar and OpenAI announced a landmark partnership turning that into a human-language conversation by introducing a ChatGPT-powered voice discovery and immersive experience into the heart of India’s largest streaming destination.
Through this collaboration, JioHotstar is solving the “what to watch” dilemma through Multilingual Cognitive Search, replacing scroll fatigue with meaningful, human-centric discovery.
In a first-of-its-kind innovation for India, audiences can now discover, engage, and immerse in their favourite stories simply by speaking across languages, genres and moments transforming streaming into an intuitive, deeply personal conversation.
Instead of navigating menus or typing keywords, viewers can simply speak their intent, mood, or context and receive intelligent, context-aware recommendations instantly. The ChatGPT-branded voice assistant completely replaces restrictive keyword-based discovery with recommendations for not just what viewers explicitly ask, but for what they didn’t yet know they were looking for, unlocking a richer, more meaningful way to experience entertainment.
Speaking about the partnership, Uday Shankar, Vice Chairman of JioStar, said,“AI marks a transformative shift for the media and entertainment industry. It fundamentally disrupts every aspect of the value chain, from conceptualisation and production to discovery and monetisation. As a tech-native, user-first platform, JioStar is embedding AI at the very core of the user experience. Our partnership with OpenAI will allow viewers to discover, engage with, and even curate content simply using their voice. This is a fundamental reimagining of the entertainment experience; one that anticipates culture and feels deeply personal to every viewer”
“Traditionally, entertainment is a one-way experience where you passively consume content – AI completely changes that dynamic.” said Fidji Simo, CEO, Applications, OpenAI. “Through our partnership with JioHotstar, we’re bringing personalized AI directly into entertainment and live sports, turning every moment into an opportunity for deeper engagement. Viewers can move seamlessly from watching to asking, from curiosity to context, and from exploration to recommendation in ways that feel natural, personal, and immediately useful.”
Whether a user says, “My parents are visiting, suggest something we can all watch together,” or “We are twins and only watch movies about identical twins,” the intelligent assistant interprets cultural nuance, situational context and layered prompts to deliver meaningful suggestions. Users will also be able to enhance their experience of live sports on JioHotstar with conversational discovery of key moments, scores, player highlights and anything else they’d like to know.
The rollout will span both live and on-demand formats, beginning with select experiences and expanding in phases.
Beyond the in-app experience, JioHotstar and OpenAI will introduce new experiences within ChatGPT, extending entertainment discovery beyond JioHotstar. Users who turn to ChatGPT for entertainment-related queries will receive contextual recommendations and relevant streaming links from JioHotstar’s vast catalogue, making the partnership a true two-way integration.
By integrating AI into streaming at scale, JioHotstar is charting the next frontier in digital entertainment. The new conversational discovery experience, powered by OpenAI’s advanced AI models, transforms streaming into an intelligent, context-aware, and personalized experience, setting a new benchmark for the industry.
As streaming in India matures, differentiation will increasingly be driven by intelligence that understands user intent and context in real time. By embedding AI-driven personalization and enabling multilingual interaction at scale, JioHotstar is building a more inclusive platform, empowering audiences to play a more active role in shaping their viewing journeys.
