Brian Van Hecke
The systems we install today behave differently from the ones we installed five years ago. The difference is not the hardware. It is what is running underneath it, and most operators are not set up to take advantage of it.
For most of the last twenty years, commercial AV was a hardware conversation. You picked displays, speakers, control panels, a head-end, and you wired it together. Once installed, it sat there. Someone walked in each morning and turned it on. Someone walked in at night and turned it off. When something broke, you called the integrator.
That model is ending. Not because the hardware has changed dramatically, Bose still makes the speakers, Samsung still makes the displays, Crestron still makes the control systems, but because the layer running on top of the hardware has changed.
AI has stopped being a buzzword in our category and has started doing actual work: monitoring system health, adjusting audio and visual conditions in response to what is happening in a room, predicting failures before they create downtime, and personalizing experiences across hundreds of locations without anyone touching a control panel.
The shift matters because AV is no longer a back-of-house cost. For multi-location brands, retail, hospitality, fitness, restaurants, entertainment, the AV system is now an active part of the customer experience and the operations team's daily workload. AI is the thing that decides whether that workload goes up or down.
Why AV is Becoming an Operating Layer, Not a Deliverable
The pro AV industry is on track to grow from roughly $321 billion in 2024 to $402 billion by 2030, according to AVIXA's 2025 Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis. The growth is real, but the more important detail in that report is where the growth is coming from.
AVIXA identifies four technologies driving the shift: AV over IP, software and cloud, AI, and extended reality. Three of those four are software categories, not hardware. The fastest-growing product segment in the entire forecast is AI-powered standalone software.
That is a structural change. Five years ago, an AV refresh was a hardware refresh. Today, an AV refresh increasingly means upgrading the intelligence layer on top of hardware that may already be perfectly capable of running it, if the network, integration model, and partner relationships are set up to support it.
In practice, this is what AI is doing inside the systems we install:
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Autonomous environment adjustment. Lighting, audio level, content scheduling, and display behavior adjust automatically based on time of day, occupancy, ambient noise, and customer flow. A fitness brand running 80 locations no longer has 80 managers manually nudging the music up at peak hours. The system does it, location by location, based on what is happening in each room.
- Predictive maintenance. Connected systems monitor themselves and report anomalies before they become failures. A display whose backlight is degrading sends a signal weeks before a customer notices a dim screen. A speaker drawing irregular current flags itself before it blows. Crestron, SAVI, and similar control platforms now expose this data in dashboards that let one operations team manage hundreds of sites without visiting any of them.
- Real-time personalization at scale. Content management platforms now route different signage, audio, and videos to different zones based on who is in the space and what they are doing. The retail floor plays one thing. The fitting room area plays another. The back-office plays nothing. None of it requires a person at a control panel.
- Network and security oversight. AV systems are now on the same enterprise networks as point-of-sale, Wi-Fi, and security cameras. AI is increasingly doing the work of segmenting traffic, watching for unusual behavior, and flagging risk before it becomes a breach. AVIXA's 2026 trends report has security at the top of the list for a reason.
Why Most Deployments are Leaving the Benefit on the Table
Here is the part that does not show up in the manufacturer marketing. We see the field reality across hundreds of installations a year, and the same pattern keeps repeating: operators are buying intelligent systems and deploying them onto infrastructure that cannot support intelligence.
Three things go wrong, almost always in this order.
First, the network is the bottleneck. Modern AV runs over IP. Predictive maintenance, real-time personalization, and remote management all depend on the system being able to talk reliably to a central platform. If a location's network was scoped years ago for a different load, the AV system either chokes or runs in a degraded mode where the intelligence layer effectively stops working. The hardware is fine. The data path is not.
Second, the integration is fragmented. Multi-location brands often have different integrators in different regions, different control platforms in different stores, and different network gear holding it all together. The intelligent system in one location cannot easily talk to the intelligent system in another. The data that would make predictive maintenance and cross-location analytics valuable stays trapped in silos. The brand pays for AI features it never gets to use.
Third, the support model is reactive. Even when the technology and network are right, most brands still operate AV the old way: something breaks, someone files a ticket, an integrator dispatches a technician. The whole point of predictive maintenance is to make that cycle obsolete. But if no one is monitoring the dashboards, no one is acting on the alerts, and no one is accountable across locations, the system flags problems into a void.
The result is a familiar one. The brand has spent meaningfully on intelligent AV. The systems are quietly trying to do their job. And the operations team is still doing manual work that the system was supposed to handle.
What Actually Works
The brands getting the operational lift from AI in AV, quieter operations, fewer truck rolls, more consistent customer experience across locations, are doing four things differently.
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They treat the network as part of the AV project. Before they sign off on the AV scope, they confirm that the network at every location can carry it. That means an honest evaluation of bandwidth, segmentation, switch capacity, and remote management, not an assumption that the existing infrastructure will be fine. In our experience, this is the single highest-leverage decision in any multi-location rollout.
- They consolidate to one accountable partner across locations. Not necessarily one manufacturer, being technology-agnostic is the right call, and we work across Bose, Samsung, LG, Crestron, Key Digital, Harman, and SAVI for exactly that reason, but one integrator and service partner who is responsible for design, deployment, and ongoing service everywhere. The intelligence layer only works if the systems are talking to each other, and that requires someone owning the whole footprint.
- They define what the AI is supposed to do before they buy it. The question is not "does this system have AI features." The question is "which three operational workloads do we want to remove from our team, and what does the system need to do to remove them." If the answer is vague, the deployment will be too.
- They build a service relationship that matches the technology. Predictive maintenance is only useful if someone is watching the alerts and dispatching against them. The brands getting value from this are pairing intelligent systems with a managed service relationship, proactive monitoring, scheduled health checks, and a single phone number when something does need a human.
The OnSite Media View
We build AV systems for multi-location operators across retail, hospitality, fitness, restaurants, and entertainment. We are seeing the same pattern across all five verticals: the brands ahead of the curve are not the ones with the newest hardware. They are the ones who decided early that the AV system is part of how the business operates, not a fixture on the wall.
Our position on AI in AV is the same as our position on the rest of the stack: the technology only delivers what the infrastructure underneath it allows. We do not sell hardware. We design, deploy, and stand behind the entire environment, network, integration, control, service, under one accountable relationship. One partner. Every location. Always on.
That is what makes AI in AV actually pay off, and that is the work we are doing with operators heading into 2026.
The Bottom Line
AI in commercial AV is not a feature you bolt on. It is a layer that either runs your system or doesn't, and that depends on decisions you make before the first speaker is mounted, about the network, the partner model, and the operational outcomes you actually want.
If you are running multi-location AV and you are not sure whether your current setup is getting the benefit of what you have already paid for, that is a worthwhile conversation. No pitch. Just a look at what you have and an honest read on what it could be doing.
Reach out anytime, brian@onsitemedia.com, or through the contact form on our site. I read everything that comes in.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Van Hecke
Founder, President & CEO, OnSite Media
Brian founded OnSite Media to give multi-location brands a single accountable partner for commercial AV, low-voltage, and IT systems. OSM serves clients across retail, hospitality, fitness, restaurants, and entertainment, and is a premier partner of Bose Pro, Samsung, LG, SAVI, Key Digital, Harman, and Crestron.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What does "AI in commercial AV" actually mean in practice?
It refers to software running on top of AV hardware that automates adjustments (audio, lighting, content), monitors system health, predicts failures, and personalizes experiences without manual input. It is increasingly built into control platforms from Crestron, SAVI, and others, and into content management and conferencing platforms.
Why aren't most multi-location brands seeing the benefits?
Three reasons: the network at each location is not scoped to support intelligent AV; the integration is fragmented across different regional partners; and the support model is still reactive rather than proactive. The technology works, the operating model around it usually does not.
Do we need to replace our existing AV hardware to benefit from AI?
Often, no. A meaningful share of the intelligence is software-layer and can run on hardware already in the field, provided the network and integration support it. An honest infrastructure assessment will tell you what is reusable and what needs to be replaced.
What is the most common mistake brands make with intelligent AV rollouts?
Treating it as a hardware purchase rather than an infrastructure decision. The buying conversation focuses on devices and prices; the value lives in network design, partner consolidation, and proactive service.
How does OnSite Media approach AI-enabled AV deployments?
We start with the network and the operational outcomes the client wants to remove from their team. Hardware selection comes after. We design, deploy, and service the full environment across every location under one accountable relationship, so the intelligence layer has the conditions it needs to actually work.