French media group Canal+ said on Wednesday it has entered a multi-year partnership with Alphabet’s Google Cloud to apply generative artificial intelligence across both its content production operations and its streaming platform.
The agreement provides Canal+ production teams with access to Google’s video generative AI, Veo 3. Canal+ said the tool will enable creators to pre-visualise scenes before filming and to reconstruct historical moments from a single archival photograph. The company added that these capabilities will be available to production companies working on films that are supported by Canal+.
As part of the commercial arrangement, Canal+ said the partnership includes intellectual property safeguards. The broadcaster stated that its rights and ownership of assets will be "deeply protected" within the secure technical environment supplied by Google Cloud.
On the distribution side, Canal+ intends to use Google’s AI technology to index its entire content catalogue and to enhance personalised recommendations on its Canal+ App. The rollout of these recommendation and indexing features will cover European and African markets where the Canal+ App is available. Canal+ said deployment is due to begin in June 2026.
Canal+ framed the move in the context of competitive pressures from larger streaming platforms. The company noted that Netflix is investing in AI-driven recommendation engines and that Amazon is embedding machine learning into Prime Video. Canal+ said it is betting on Google’s technological capabilities to help it expand its reach as it pursues a subscriber target of up to 100 million by 2030 following its acquisition of South Africa’s MultiChoice.
Impacted sectors - Media and entertainment, streaming distribution, and film production services are the primary sectors affected by the partnership.