Amazon Web Services used its NAB 2026 presence to demonstrate how generative AI is moving into media workflows across broadcast, content creation, and software development. The company's booth on the show floor highlighted three distinct applications: real-time vertical video generation for live broadcasts, a hybrid filmmaking collaboration with Luma AI and the Wonder Project, and an agentic IDE called Kiro that lets non-developers build production tools through vibe coding.
The breadth of the demos reflected AWS's positioning not as a creative tool company, but as infrastructure that supports creative workflows from capture through distribution. Each demonstration targeted a different segment of the media and entertainment industry.
Elemental Inference and Live Vertical Video
AWS launched Elemental Inference, a service designed to help broadcasters and streamers generate vertical video from live content in real time. The company pointed to Gen Z consumption patterns: 88% of that demographic watches streaming content on mobile in vertical format, forcing traditional broadcasters to compete with the native formats of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram.
On the show floor, AWS demonstrated this with a basketball court setup in partnership with MLSE (owners of the Toronto Raptors). Attendees could shoot baskets while cameras captured their form, generated real-time biomechanics comparisons to Raptors players, and then produced a vertical video clip of their shots with sub-10-second latency. While the basketball demo was a show floor activation, the underlying capability targets a real production challenge: generating vertical, social-ready content from live horizontal broadcasts without manual editing.
The key differentiator from existing clipping tools, according to AWS, is the live component. VOD clipping and vertical reformatting already exist across several platforms. Generating vertical clips from live feeds with minimal latency is the technical challenge Elemental Inference addresses.
Hybrid Filmmaking with Luma AI and the Wonder Project
AWS announced a collaboration with Luma AI and Wonder Project, the production company led by John Irwin (House of David). The partnership introduces what AWS calls "real-time hybrid filmmaking," combining live performance capture with AI-generated visual effects and LED wall environments.
The concept allows actors to perform inside immersive digital environments rather than working against green screens. AWS describes the workflow as enabling scene creation in minutes rather than the hours or days traditional pre-visualization and virtual production setup require. The Wonder Project's involvement signals that the collaboration is aimed at scripted content production, not just corporate or event video.
This is one of several recent efforts to bridge generative AI capabilities with traditional filmmaking workflows. The involvement of AWS as infrastructure, Luma AI as the generation layer, and a production company with streaming credits suggests a full-stack approach that goes beyond individual tool demonstrations.
Kiro: An Agentic IDE for Media Professionals
AWS showed Kiro, an agentic integrated development environment that allows non-developers to build software tools through natural language prompts. On the NAB show floor, AWS demonstrated a workflow where a non-developer who uses Adobe Premiere used Kiro to build a custom plugin in a single afternoon. The plugin added a side panel in Premiere that exports assets directly to an AWS media lake for content analysis.
The demonstration highlighted a broader trend: as creative workflows become more complex, the ability to build custom integrations without a dedicated engineering team becomes a practical advantage. AWS positions Kiro as a way for media professionals to extend the tools they already use rather than waiting for vendors to add features.
According to AWS, more than half of the demonstrations on the NAB show floor were built using Kiro, with the tool handling code generation for demo infrastructure alongside its use in customer-facing workflows.
From Enterprise to Independent Productions
AWS also announced that Fox Corporation signed on as its cloud provider of choice, covering content creation through distribution. But the company emphasized that the same infrastructure supports smaller productions. The combination of Kiro for custom tooling, Bedrock for AI model access, and Elemental for distribution is designed to scale from major studios to independent teams.
For filmmakers and production teams evaluating cloud infrastructure, the NAB demonstrations showed AWS pushing beyond traditional cloud storage and compute into active participation in creative workflows. The question for potential customers is whether a general-purpose cloud platform can deliver specialized creative tools as effectively as purpose-built solutions.
