HBO Max is the latest streamer getting into vertical video — sort of.
The platform on Tuesday announced two new mobile features for the U.S. market. The headline one is titled “HBO Max Shorts,” and is “designed to help users discover something to watch by highlighting iconic and memorable scenes from the HBO Max library in a vertical, scrollable feed,” per the platform.
Right now, the feature is being tested with “select” iOS users in the U.S. More devices and more markets will come, HBO Max says, as will sports shorts.
For now, the lucky few users can tap the “Shorts” icon on the bottom navigation menu to “browse trailers, clips, and bonus content,” the announcement continues. HBO Max’s algorithm will deliver content based on watch history. The user can then choose to continue to the depicted series or film (in full) immediately, add it to their “My List,” or do nothing at all.
Here’s what HBO Max Shorts are not: original content. You can breathe a sigh of relief, ReelShort. The vertical videos are simply trimmings of existing HBO Max programming rendered into a new presentation ratio to push users toward long form consumption. Netflix is doing something similar.
HBO Max Shorts are created by an in-house AI tool, “which helps human editors select and verticalize content by using machine learning algorithms that utilize scene-level metadata to comb through thousands of hours of titles and suggests the most compelling, high-impact scenes for discovery.” If you got all of that, and if “verticalize” is a word. What they want to to take away there is that real people are involved in this process — at some point.
“We’re thrilled to launch this application of AI to accelerate the creation of these clips and look forward to quickly expanding to make even more of our amazing content offering discoverable through this new feature,” Deepna Devkar, HBO Max senior vice president of Machine Learning Engineering, said in the announcement.
The other new feature, also in a test phase, is called “Ask HBO Max.” It too uses AI to aid a user to discover content via “natural language,” like, “in the mood for a comedy,” “dysfunctional family drama,” or “best movie for a girls night in.”
“These new mobile features build on intuitive, familiar behaviors subscribers use every day,” said Liesel Kipp, executive vice president of Product Management, Warner Bros. Discovery. “Both ‘HBO Max Shorts’ and ‘conversational search’ translate those behaviors into new ways to discover programming across the HBO Max service, making it easier and more seamless for subscribers to find something to watch.”
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