AWS Elemental has been nominated for the 2026 World AI Awards in the Broadcasting Enhancement category, recognising its work in video processing, cloud broadcasting and the growing use of artificial intelligence inside live media workflows.
Broadcasting has changed quickly. A television feed is no longer enough. The same event might need to appear on a connected TV, a streaming platform, a smartphone and several social networks — sometimes in completely different formats.
AWS Elemental has spent years building infrastructure for that problem. Its technology handles live encoding, video transport, transcoding, packaging and personalised distribution for broadcasters and streaming providers. In 2026, AWS pushed AI directly into that workflow with AWS Elemental Inference.
The World AI Awards recognises organisations, individuals, products and technologies contributing to the development and practical application of artificial intelligence across industries.
For AWS Elemental, the interesting part is where the AI sits. Instead of asking broadcasters to build a separate AI production pipeline after a programme has been created, Elemental Inference can analyse and transform video while it is already being encoded.
AI enters the live broadcast workflow
AWS launched Elemental Inference into general availability in February 2026 as a fully managed AI service for live and on-demand video.
The service works alongside AWS Elemental MediaLive and MediaConvert. During encoding, it can analyse the content and create additional outputs without requiring broadcasters to send the programme through an entirely separate post-production process.
One of its first practical applications tackles a very ordinary broadcasting problem: television is generally produced horizontally, while much of the audience consuming video on phones expects vertical content.
Elemental Inference can automatically transform landscape broadcasts into vertical versions suitable for platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat.
That matters during live events. Waiting for an editor to find a moment, crop it manually and prepare another version can mean publishing after the conversation has already moved on.
AWS says the system can perform that transformation in real time alongside the primary broadcast.
Finding the moment worth clipping
Cropping video is only part of the problem.
Elemental Inference also analyses contextual metadata to identify important moments and create highlight clips from live content. AWS points to sports broadcasting as an obvious use case: significant moments from a game can be detected and turned into social-ready clips while the event is still happening.
AWS describes the underlying system as an agentic AI application that can operate without individual prompts or routine human intervention.
The company reported that large media companies participating in beta testing achieved 34% or greater savings on AI-powered live-video workflows compared with using multiple point solutions. That figure comes from AWS’s own testing and should be treated as a company-reported result rather than an outcome every broadcaster should expect.
The practical attraction is straightforward. Broadcasters already create enormous quantities of content. AI becomes more useful when it helps turn one production into several usable versions without requiring the production team to repeat the same work for every destination.
The broadcasting infrastructure underneath the AI
Elemental Inference builds on a much larger AWS Elemental video stack.
AWS Elemental MediaLive provides broadcast-grade real-time video processing, taking incoming live video and encoding it into streams suitable for broadcast television and internet-connected devices. It supports features including captions, multiple language audio tracks, ad markers and broadcast loudness correction.
AWS Elemental MediaConnect handles live-video transport, while MediaPackage prepares and protects video for distribution. MediaConvert performs file-based transcoding for video-on-demand and archive workflows. MediaConvert can also work with AI and machine-learning models to help generate relevant sports highlight clips.
AWS has continued adding intelligence around that infrastructure. At IBC 2026, the company announced another group of AWS Elemental capabilities aimed at bringing AI, viewer personalisation and more intelligent monetisation into live-video workflows.
This is where the Broadcasting Enhancement nomination becomes particularly relevant. AWS Elemental is not trying to replace broadcasting with AI. It is putting AI inside processes broadcasters already have to perform — encoding, adapting, analysing, distributing and monetising video.
One broadcast, many different audiences
The wider challenge facing broadcasters is fragmentation.
A live programme may begin as a high-quality landscape production intended for television. Minutes later, parts of the same programme may need to become vertical clips for mobile viewers, highlights for social platforms, streams for connected TVs and personalised experiences for digital audiences.
Traditionally, those outputs can involve separate production systems and additional operational work.
AWS is taking a different route with Elemental Inference: analyse the video during the same encoding process and generate additional outputs and metadata while the content is moving through the broadcast workflow.
That does not remove editors, producers or broadcast engineers from the process. It changes which repetitive production tasks can be automated — and how quickly a broadcaster can turn one live feed into content for several different audiences.
Graham Cooke, President of the World AI Awards, said:
“AWS Elemental’s nomination highlights an important shift in broadcasting. Artificial intelligence is becoming most useful when it fits naturally into the production systems that media organisations already depend on.
“From adapting live broadcasts for mobile audiences to identifying moments that can become highlights in real time, AWS Elemental is showing how AI can help broadcasters get more value from the content they are already producing. We congratulate the AWS Elemental team on its 2026 World AI Awards nomination in Broadcasting Enhancement and look forward to following how these capabilities develop.”
AWS Elemental joins organisations, technology developers and innovators being recognised through the 2026 World AI Awards.
The programme recognises organisations, individuals and technologies contributing to the development and application of artificial intelligence across industries.
Broadcasting offers an interesting test of that progress because speed matters almost as much as intelligence. A highlight identified several hours after a live match is useful. The same highlight identified, reformatted and prepared for mobile distribution while the match is still underway can serve a very different purpose.
AWS Elemental’s work brings those two worlds together: established broadcast infrastructure and AI capable of acting on video while that content is still moving through the production pipeline.
Learn more about AWS Elemental and its media technology at aws.amazon.com/media/elemental/.
Discover the World AI Awards 2026, explore the nominees and learn more about the awards at worldawards.ai.
