"Artificial intelligence will never replace a talented person"

In 2025, the media industry is undergoing major changes: audiences are fragmenting, formats are becoming more flexible, and artificial intelligence technologies are increasingly entering the processes of creating and promoting content. Alexander Zharov, CEO of Gazprom Media Holding, told Izvestia on the sidelines of SPIEF 2025 in more detail about how media trends are changing, how Rutube's smart algorithms work and what prospects open up for Russian video platforms on the global market.

"Flexibility of formats is important today"

— What trends are prevailing in the media industry now?

— If we talk about general trends, then this is the division of audiences. Each information distribution channel has its own audience by age and gender. Flexibility of formats is important today. The author and distributor of the format should think about how to reach the maximum audience using different platforms. For example, for a movie, it will be rental, television, and an online platform. At the same time, the film must be shown so that it can be sold to other platforms. It should be so interesting that it can be re-shown. This is achieved due to the flexibility of the format.

The second trend is the use of artificial intelligence. These technologies are widely used in Gazprom Media Holding. Artificial intelligence is complex neural networks that control different processes and process large amounts of data. The technology is suitable for analyzing user comments and reviews. If generative artificial intelligence learns how to create not only short, but also long-scale videos, then films, TV series and programs can be made much faster.

— There is an opinion that artificial intelligence can replace journalists and TV presenters. For example, in China, the usual news anchor has been replaced with a virtual avatar, and generative programs such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Grok from Elon Musk's company X do an excellent job with text. Do you think neural networks are a new tool or a threat to the industry?

— In my opinion, artificial intelligence differs from humans by the absence of a soul. Technology has no passion, no vital energy, and it will never appear. Artificial intelligence will never replace a talented person.

"Artificial intelligence ensures the operation of the most important components of the platform"

— Accordingly, is artificial intelligence more of a tool?

— Absolutely. Firstly, in our holding, generative artificial intelligence is used to process and produce short-format videos. At the moment, these are advertising and informational videos that are used to promote products. But we are actively working to ensure that artificial intelligence can produce longer videos. This is a program created on the basis of domestic developments, which is being finalized by our specialists for their own needs.

Artificial intelligence also ensures the operation of the most important components of the platform. This is a recommendation system, search and advertising technologies. The recommendation system is based on look-alike technology. She selects recommendations for a person based on their previous requests, taking into account their interests. Artificial intelligence is also refining the search, offering operational and most suitable options. In addition, the technology selects unobtrusive and organic advertising for a person that may be of interest to him.

The second area where artificial intelligence is used is a wide variety of technologies for working with big data. For example, users comment and rate videos, and based on their opinions, the development team improves the platform. Artificial intelligence allows you not only to quickly rank reviews, but also to describe their emotional coloring. And if a specialist does this, it will take days, weeks, and even months. In addition, artificial intelligence allows you to record all user actions on the platform. This allows you to create a high-quality profile of a person.

Artificial intelligence helps to detect violations on the platform: fakes, traffic fraud, when traffic is redirected from other sites or to other sites. The technology warns the author about this, because traffic is money. With high traffic, advertising will cost more.

Screenwriters also work with artificial intelligence. We have a huge database of scenarios in our holding, which a specialist can refer to when creating a new project.

— Does artificial intelligence write scripts by itself?

— It hasn't come to that yet, and I believe it won't. Of course, artificial intelligence helps us moderate videos. There are about 400 million videos on the Rutube platform today, and people upload a million videos every day, and we need to work with this. It is necessary to identify explicit content, pornography, alcohol consumption, smoking scenes, etc. Artificial intelligence, which is guided by a specialist, quickly copes with this. The moderator independently adjusts what the artificial intelligence should pay attention to. It helps a lot and speeds up the process.

— Let's move on to another important issue.: How is the YouTube competition going? When will a foreign video platform be banned in Russia?

"YouTube will never be banned, because it has banned itself"

— I remember very well how Google systematically placed so-called "caching" servers, that is, those servers in the regions where the traffic came. This accelerated the response to the user's request. Since the beginning of the special military operation, they have stopped doing this. Further, they were extremely disrespectful to the Russian author and the viewer. They canceled advertising and removed monetization for content. Since the servers are not being updated, the video quality has started to suffer.

Today, Izvestia wrote that based on an analysis of data from the Mediascope research company, VKontakte is in the first place — it has grown to 93 million monthly audience. Rutube is in second place with 80 million monthly audience. And YouTube, which was at an incredible height, is already in third place, with 78 million users. And the downward trend of the platform continues. I don't think it should be blocked. He's already shot himself. And I think the most important quality of the platform is user friendly. You need to love your user and create good conditions for them.

— Can you name specific data? What are Rutube's gains now?

— Four years ago, Rutube had several shareholders. When we took ownership of 100% of this platform, its daily audience was 60 thousand people, and its monthly audience was 600 thousand people. That is, it is zero, you can say. Today we have a daily audience of 16 to 20 million people, and a monthly audience of about 80 million people. From 2024 to 2025, the audience grew by 71%.

Today, more than 4 million 100 thousand authors work on the platform — these are channels registered on Rutube. A year ago, there were only 1 million 400 thousand of them. That is, the growth rate of both authors and the audience is very high. In the first six months of 2024, 18 billion 600 million videos were viewed. The indicators are growing very fast.

Of course, this is a challenge for us. We need to develop CDN, infrastructure, and meet user needs. And we are still keeping up with the audience, as evidenced by the growth of indicators. It's not a problem to install a VPN for watching YouTube right now, but many users choose Rutube, which means it's convenient and meets their request.

— How do you attract new authors? Are there any non-obvious ways to monetize?

"The number of authors on Rutube has increased to 4 million"

— Monetization methods are always obvious. This is an advertising model and donations. Donations have increased sixfold in the last month. Today, a blogger can earn 460 thousand rubles with donations. In principle, it's a decent amount of money. And this topic will continue to evolve. Due to the high traffic of the platform, it is interesting for advertisers. Therefore, bloggers' advertising revenue is also growing.

I believe in the further development of the platform, because over the year the number of authors on Rutube, as I said, has increased to 4 million 100 thousand. And it's not just Russian bloggers. We are working with Chinese colleagues. In the first six months of 2025, 45,000 videos about China appeared on the platform. They are popular. And during the same time, 100 channels of Chinese bloggers have appeared.

In addition, a month and a half ago in Mumbai, at the first Waves World Summit of Entertainment and Advertising Industries, a cooperation agreement was signed with two of India's largest blogging agencies. Indian bloggers also come to Rutube, which is a huge audience. According to Rutube traffic analysis, it is used not only in Russia, but also in Europe, Asia and America. You can identify the top three countries in terms of views. First, these are Russian—speaking countries: Kazakhstan has 147 million views in the first six months of 2025, the United States is in second place with 144 million views, and Belarus is in third place with 126 million views.

— Can we say that Rukube helps to spread "Russian influence" outside of Russia? Or is it more of a commercial venture?

— This is definitely a commercial enterprise. We are building a financial model in which year Rutube will pay off and make a profit. It should be borne in mind that so far there are three countries in the world that have a full or almost complete set of digital services. These are the USA, China and Russia. Therefore, we certainly have the right to talk about the possibility of presence in foreign markets. We are currently negotiating with two countries to acquire the White label technology of one of our platforms with a different name. We must take a very close look at our competitors, actively compete within the country, and think about global competition. I am sure that VKontakte, RUTUBE and Yandex have every right to be interested in foreign users.

"Our brain is much more complex than artificial intelligence, it still has an emotional part"

— Let's return to the issue of artificial intelligence. Izvestia reported that after the launch of the latest generative neural network model for creating videos, very realistic short videos flooded social networks. How do you think it is possible to distinguish between reality and fantasy created by artificial intelligence?

— Our brain is much more complex than artificial intelligence, it also has an emotional part. Therefore, I think that's the nuance, it's always in the details. Generative artificial intelligence can certainly learn this, but it's just difficult to describe an important component. For example, small movements of muscles, eyes. It will happen, but it's only a matter of time, and whoever does it first will definitely win the competition.

— Is there any need to do anything to protect people from fake videos?

— The law on artificial intelligence should be adopted only in Russia, but also in all countries of the world. It is necessary to fight deepfake, because with this you can destroy a person and destroy his family.