Tubi Launches ChatGPT App to End Streaming Search Frustration

Choosing something to watch can be a chore. Viewers spent an average of 20 minutes searching for their next title in 2025, more than double the time in 2019, turning discovery into a hassle rather than part of the experience. Tubi is betting that friction is also an opportunity.

The Fox-owned free streaming service launched a native app within ChatGPT this week, shifting discovery to where users are already searching. After installing the app from the ChatGPT store, users can type “@Tubi” and describe what they want to watch, with results linking directly to titles on the platform. It marks the first time a major streaming service has built this kind of integration, and signals a new front in the battle for viewer attention.

Discovery as the New Battleground

More than 34% of Tubi viewers are between 18 and 34. That demographic splits its attention across TikTok, Instagram and streaming simultaneously.

“Our bet is that the future of television should be as easy and personalized as Instagram,” Tubi Chief Executive Anjali Sud told the Wall Street Journal.

Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have experimented with AI recommendations inside their own platforms. Neither has built a dedicated experience inside ChatGPT. ChatGPT hit 900 million weekly active users in February. Tubi reports more than 100 million monthly active users. Within that distribution gap lies the opportunity.

Tubi tried building its own AI discovery tool in 2023 with Rabbit AI, an in-house feature that let users ask questions and get personalized recommendations. It was shut down the following year. But this time, Tubi isn’t building its own interface. It’s embedding itself in the one people already use.

An Ad Model Built for Intent

Tubi has spent years building AI into its ad stack. The company combined large language models with deep learning to read user intent, then applied that across both content recommendations and ad placement, the Wall Street Journal reported. Its models are trained on 1 billion hours of monthly viewing data.

One product from that work is Tubi Moments. It tags scenes by tone, sentiment and visual content. A scene featuring a drink gets labeled as inventory that a beverage brand can sell. A contextually matched ad runs during the next break. “This is something that would have absolutely not been doable two years ago,” Mike Bidgoli, Tubi’s chief product and technology officer, told the Journal.

Conversational prompts sharpen that targeting. A viewer who types “a legal thriller set in the South” signals something more specific than someone scrolling a genre row. That specificity feeds the ad engine. PwC projected that U.S. streaming ad revenue will grow from $26.5 billion to $37.3 billion by 2029, a 40% increase that outpaces subscription revenue growth over the same period.

Tubi generated more than $1.1 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue. Its most recent quarter was up 19% year over year. Fox said the service turned profitable in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. It held a 2.2% share of all U.S. television viewing at the end of fiscal 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported.

A Platform Shift Every Streamer Will Watch

OpenAI launched the ChatGPT app store to developers last October. Booking.com, Canva, DoorDash, Expedia, Spotify, Figma and Zillow have all since launched integrations. Tubi is the first streaming video service in that group.

Playback still happens on Tubi’s site or app. The ChatGPT integration handles discovery. Whether that handoff converts at scale is what Tubi’s ad team will be watching. Tubi’s Stream 2026 study found that 80% of respondents said they’d rather watch TV or movies than scroll social media, the company said.

For a free service competing against every screen in a viewer’s hand, closing the gap between intent and play button may change the whole game.

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