NAB Show 2025 featured latest generative AI, live cloud sports production capabilities from AWS

More than 55,000 media and entertainment professionals from 160 countries gathered in Las Vegas for NAB Show 2025. At this year’s event, HAQM Web Services (AWS) served up new innovations, industry announcements, and memorable moments at the show.

Creating. Connecting. Captivating.

As the road to convergence starts with data and scalability, the AWS booth featured more than 30 interconnected demos across Live Cloud Production for Sports, Fan Engagement, Multi-channel Monetization, Radio and Podcasts, and more. Demos highlighted how AWS helps customers fuel fan engagement by enabling them to create content, connect workflows, and captivate audiences. The demos spanned post production, AWS Elemental Media Services, AWS for Games, generative AI, and data science and analytics.

AWS booth at NAB 2025.

Attendees were also able to see new technology in action, including NDI output support for AWS Elemental MediaConnect and SMPTE 2110 support in AWS Elemental MediaLive Anywhere. The new features make it smoother than ever for broadcasters to leverage IP technology in cloud and hybrid environments.

In the AWS Builder Zone, visitors had the opportunity to connect with AWS experts and learn how to build unique workflow solutions. Alongside established AWS Elemental Media Services, the area also featured recently launched game streaming capability HAQM GameLift Streams, empowering broadcasters with new ways to engage audiences.

Announcements

How AWS is innovating in generative AI was a recurring theme throughout the show. During this year’s event, HAQM Nova Sonic and HAQM Nova Reel 1.1 foundation models (FMs) were launched to support building voice applications and agents, as well as video generation.

Additionally, multimodal AI provider TwelveLabs announced that their video understanding models Pegasus and Marengo will soon be available on HAQM Bedrock. The integration brings enterprise-grade security, guardrails, monitoring, and cost control to these deployments.

Finally, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe announced a new generative AI-powered platform built on AWS, Cycling Central Intelligence (CCI). It will help commentators enhance the mountain bike viewing experience.

Live cloud sports production in action

The AWS Esport Racing Challenge was a can’t-miss attraction during NAB. Attendees eagerly jumped into the driver’s seat of professional-grade racing simulators for a high-octane example of a live cloud production workflow. Then, the AWS production team leveraged cloud-based infrastructure, race telemetry data, and generative AI to create race highlights and summaries in near real time. The Esport Racing Challenge in the West Hall lobby not only welcomed attendees with an exciting activation, but it also fed live video content into the AWS booth.

Esport Racing Challenge.

Presented by AWS and NVIDIA and produced by Tagboard, with support from Sinclair, the activation encompassed four racing simulators. Race footage and post-race interviews were produced and streamed in the booth in 4K HDR. Content was also broadcast to local Las Vegas station KSNV using ATSC 3.0, demonstrating next generation broadcast technology. Booth visitors could see the action unfold in real time with a direct view into the production control room fishbowl.

Powered by generative AI

Visitors to the AWS booth were able to explore all of the latest uses cases for how generative AI can benefit their organizations.

Building on the theme of sports production, the AWS booth featured a realistic proto hologram of Formula 1 (F1) strategist Ruth Buscombe. This fully interactive, AI-powered holographic presence engaged with attendees in natural, knowledge-based conversations in multiple languages while maintaining lifelike visual fidelity. The experience combined Proto’s AI Conversational Persona Technology for holographic display, HAQM Bedrock featuring Anthropic’s Claude for intelligence trained across a specialized F1-centric RAG, and HeyGen’s facial animation system. It also integrated various AWS services, including HAQM SageMaker AI, HAQM Rekognition, and HAQM Translate. Learn how we built the generative AI-powered digital double experience.

Proto hologram of Formula 1 (F1) strategist Ruth Buscombe.

Other generative AI demos in the AWS booth included the character consistent storyboard solution, which demonstrated how HAQM Nova Canvas can be customized for secure creative ideation. Using assets from award-winning animated short film “Picchu,” the demo enabled booth visitors to quickly generate new assets consistent with the established visual aesthetic. Additionally, the advanced video understanding capabilities of HAQM Bedrock, coupled with agentic workflows, were highlighted in the media operations agent demo. Using generative AI agents to plan and execute video content management, this demo showed how broadcasters can unlock the value of their archives, without the headache of managing complex, manually-coded automation logic.

In the NAB Show AI Innovation Pavilion, visitors were able to step into a pitwall inspired by trackside race command centers. Visitors designed original race tracks using AI-powered analysis from HAQM Nova Pro. They were also able to create and print custom stickers using HAQM Nova. The robust capabilities of HAQM Bedrock as well as generative AI assistant HAQM Q were also featured, enabling attendees to get hands-on with each service.

Insightful sessions

Changing viewer preferences for more immersive and personalized experiences, coupled with new technology innovations and more content platforms, is fueling a convergence of content mediums across media and entertainment, games, and sports. Across several sessions at NAB, AWS alongside partners and customers looked ahead at how the entertainment world is using technology to meet this moment of convergence.

AWS General Manager of Media & Entertainment, Games, and Sports Samira Panah Bakhtiar kicked off the week with a Main Stage session exploring how generative AI is reshaping storytelling. She was joined by industry leaders Gerard Medioni, Vice President and Distinguished Scientist at Prime Video; Ira Rubenstein, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer for PBS; Devin Poolman, Chief Product and Technology Officer for Cosm; and Raghvender Arni, AWS Director of Cloud and AI Innovation Team. The group shared how their organizations are implementing generative AI today and their thoughts on what the future might hold.

Main Stage session.

During the NAB Sports Summit on Tuesday, AWS Director, Strategic Business Development, Media & Entertainment, Games, and Sports Chris Blandy joined Fox Sports Digital, Sportec Solutions, and Tagboard to explore the role of AI in live sports personalization. Blandy also teamed with IMAX for a discussion on how cloud-based technology is elevating live sports streaming.

Throughout the week, AWS technical leaders, HAQM Partner Network (APN) partners, and AWS customers shared how they are accelerating media workloads with AWS through presentations in the AWS Theater. Paramount Global discussed how the company is using HAQM Nova to automate compliance and content moderation, saving time and money. The National Hockey League (NHL) revealed how they are meeting modern fan demands with real-time metadata, operational resilience, and scalable engagement. TwelveLabs offered a peek at what customers can expect when the company’s video AI models are available on HAQM Bedrock in the near future. Following its strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) announcement with AWS ahead of NAB, Avid teamed with Wolftech to show how the right toolset integrations and the cloud empower teams to create and deliver content faster than ever.

The AWS Theater schedule also featured thought-provoking sessions with Arc XP, Beamr, Bitmovin, Coactive, Fabric, GeoComply, Hydrolix, IPV, LucidLink, LTIMindtree, Mediacube, New Relic, Orange Logic, Presidio, Quickplay, Sinclair, Synamedia, Virtusa, Wondery, and more.

Honoring innovation

Recognizing women who are shaping the industry, TVNewsCheck bestowed the Women in Technology Futurist Award to Nina Walsh, AWS Global Leader, Industry Business Development, Media & Entertainment, Games, and Sports.

HAQM Nova earned a NAB Show Product of the Year as well as a Future Best of Show Award (TVBEurope). Introduced at AWS re:Invent 2024, HAQM Nova models can lower the cost and latency for nearly any generative AI task. For example, multimodal HAQM Nova Pro accelerates media indexing and search by generating rich metadata, while HAQM Nova Reel transforms text and natural language prompts into short-form videos.

NAB Show Product of the Year award for HAQM Nova.

Additionally, a new integrated capability of AWS Media Services and HAQM CloudFront, Media Quality-Aware Resiliency (MQAR) also earned a NAB Show Product of the Year and a Future Best of Show Award (TV Tech).

Learn more

Check out an overview of all the AWS NAB 2025 demos for a complete rundown, including video recordings and reference architecture. Relive the action, and follow AWS for M&E on LinkedIn for the latest updates.

A huge thank you to all the attendees, and AWS customers, partners, and staff who contributed to such an inspiring event!