Building with AI Before Breakfast: Family Movie Picker with AI Recommender at Abu Dhabi Natural History Museum

So. I’m writing this while enjoying a bit of AI before breakfast, sitting over at the new Natural History Museum here in Abu Dhabi. It’s a pretty incredible backdrop - you’ve got these massive, ancient skeletons and the history of the world around you. I even got to touch a part of the actual moon. The actual moon!

Standing there, holding a piece of something that came from 238,000 miles away, it really makes you think about how far we’ve push the boundaries of what’s possible. But yet we still can’t decide what to watch on TV on a Friday night even with all this history and all the tech we’ve got in our pockets in 2026.

Give it a try at moviepicker.leemallon.com.

What are we actually going to watch?

It’s the great Digital Paradox. I’ve got the combined libraries of Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV, and the Apple Store right here. We’re talking about roughly 34,000 movies at our fingertips. Theoretically, it’s a dream. We have more access to culture than any generation in human history.

And yet, forty minutes into “Family Night,” the pizza is getting cold, the kids are starting to bicker, and you’re still scrolling through the “Trending Now” row for the fourteenth time.

The “Netflix Syndrome” is Real

You know that feeling when you’re looking at so many options that your brain just... stops? Psychologists call this the Paradox of Choice. It’s the idea that while having some choice is good, having too much choice actually paralyzes us.

I’ve seen stats saying the average person now spends about 25 minutes just trying to pick a movie. If you do that once a week, you’re spending over 21 hours a year just looking at posters and reading synopses. You’re basically working a part-time job as a movie critic just to find something to eat your popcorn to.

When you add a family into the mix, that paralysis triples. You’re not just trying to find a “good” movie; you’re trying to find that “Venn Diagram” movie - the one that satisfies:

• The 7-year-old who only wants cartoons.

• The teenager who thinks everything is “cringe.”

• The parents who just want something with a halfway decent plot.

Why “Smart” Algorithms are Failing Us

You’d think with all the AI and machine learning these platforms have, they’d know us by now. But there’s a fundamental flaw: Streaming algorithms are built for individuals, not groups.

Your Netflix profile knows you like gritty true crime. Your kids’ profile knows they like Bluey. But when you sit down together, the TV doesn’t know how to merge those worlds. It just shows you a generic list of “Family Hits” that you’ve already seen a dozen times or that nobody actually wants to watch.

We’ve moved from the “scarcity” of the old video rental store - where you picked from what was actually on the shelf and usually liked it - to an “abundance” that feels like a chore.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot while working on my latest project. If the problem is “too many boxes” to look at, maybe the solution isn’t more filters or better categories. Maybe the solution is gamifying the decision.

Imagine if, instead of the “Endless Scroll,” your family spent three minutes on their own phones before the movie started. A quick “swipe-left-swipe-right” session on a curated stack of posters.

• Left: No way.

• Right: I’d watch that.

By the time the popcorn is in the bowl, the logic has crunched the numbers and said: “Hey, everyone actually swiped right on ‘Finding Nemo.’ Press play.”

Give it a try at moviepicker.leemallon.com.

The “Digital Buffet” isn’t going away. If anything, it’s getting bigger as more niche services pop up. But the goal of technology shouldn’t be to keep us scrolling; it should be to get us to the “Play” button as fast as possible so we can actually get back to the point of movie night: spending time together.

Because at the end of the day, the best part of the movie isn’t the resolution on the screen - it’s the fact that you’re actually watching it instead of arguing about it.

Give it a try at moviepicker.leemallon.com.