How Polsat Plus Group Is Leading Polish Media in the AI Era — ElevenLabs Summit Warsaw 2026

[music] Peter, it's a huge pleasure to have you with us today. Before we get started, we cannot see that well, but if you grew up or watch Polsat, can you raise your hand? Okay. Yeah, that's good. I like that. A big majority, and given we have a international audience that came in here today. Um hopefully many of you will be uh watchers of Polsat too, but as a quick introduction, most of this room will um will already know uh uh Piotr and and the work behind the scenes. But for those who aren't familiar, Polsat Plus Group is one of the largest is the largest media and telco group in Poland with businesses across TV, mobile, internet, real estate, and green energy. I still remember Polsat growing growing up and watching and admiring a lot of the productions. Um you stepped to lead iconic Polsat TV in 2024 after almost a decade decade building your own businesses and influencer marketing and gaming. I'm curious about that shift. How have you found stepping into a 30-year-old institution after building from scratch your whole career? Uh thank you so much for that question, and thank you everybody for being here. Uh I know it's been a long day, but this is an amazing place to have a conference like this. Um and let me just start answering your question by something that's very relevant. Um just a couple years ago, we had the 30th anniversary of Grupa Polsat Plus right here on this stage in this building. Amazing. Um and I remember I was sitting up there, and we were inviting people on stage who have worked with the group for over 25 years. And and there wasn't many of them, but there was about a dozen or two dozen people that came up on stage, and I had the chance to talk to them after. And it was absolutely amazing, the knowledge, the experience, the the history that they had with this organization working here, you know, since they were 18, since they were 20, and throughout their whole lives. Um and so when I took over at the beginning or at the end of last year, beginning of this year, um my first goal was to understand that heritage which I'm taking over, the tradition, kind of the reason things are the way they are today. Um and then my second step was to use my history, use my knowledge um from having ran startups in the past, um and understanding what it's like to manage a small team, to micromanage decisions, um but also to innovate and to be very agile, to be very quick with with new ideas and incorporating new concepts. Um and I think combining those two elements was really the key to our success over the 6 months, and I'm sure will be the key to our success over the coming years as well. I hope you organize more events back here. Oh, yeah. It's an iconic iconic venue. Any other learnings you you would take from building the companies that you can apply to your new role or any learnings that you will not take over to the new role? I mean, I know I can't take everything with me because micromanaging an organization which, you know, employs nearly 20,000 people across Poland, provides services to over 8 million clients, that's that's impossible. That's not going to happen. Um but I think one of the things I learned which I took over with me is um trusting the people you work with and really surrounding yourself with people who are experts in what they're doing. As the old saying goes, if you're in the if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Um and that's why I'm very happy to be here with with everyone here on stage. Um so yeah, certainly it's surrounding yourself with people who are who who are experts in their field, and sometimes it can be very hard, you know, because um sometimes you can get along with someone very well, but but when it comes time to to pull your sleeves up and execute, they're they're not able to do it. And the opposite is also true. I'm sure you know this. We all work with people who you know, we're not the biggest fans of on a daily basis, but when they deliver, they deliver big. And it's important to have a balance of those people and be able to delegate those tasks to them as well. Can I make a remark? It's at the end of the day, it's always all about people. I'm in a very lucky position with incredible 11 apps team. Many of them here in the audience as well listening. And I hear some of the people from your team are also here. All the all the people that really drive and and and bring that innovation. Perhaps shifting a little bit, both of our companies have big ambitions. Yet we share a similar battle. In our world, we are building a technology platform where we want to compete with Google, with Open AI. In your case, in Polsat, you fight for attention with Netflix, with Disney, with Amazon Prime. How do you differentiate? And how do you fight like this? You know, that's a that's a very good question. And I think the answer will be a bit different for my organization and for yours because at the very core of the Polsat Plus Group for the last 30 years, it's always been about local content for us. And really conquering the hearts and minds of our clients and of the Polish people. And you know, you did this test at the very beginning. Everyone, I'm guessing that's from Poland, knows our brand and has had a chance to watch our productions from the media side, from the Polsat side. And if they haven't, then they probably used our telephones at some point or another. And the foreigners, hopefully, you know, when you come to Poland, you'll be able to experience this these things as well. but our focus on the emotion that we bring out within our clients, within the people that we deliver content to, is the core competitive advantage that we have. And, you know, my understanding is from your perspective, you are leading globally. And you want to come back to Poland and and and you want to deliver also to the people here. And that's why I think our cooperation can be so valuable uh in the future because we can provide you with the information you need to deliver the emotion through your voices as well. And and I saw some of that just a second ago on stage with the with the previous speaker. And you know, a big round of applause to her. And um and I hope you'll be able to do that with television content, online content, translations uh in the future as well. 100% 100% it's it's it's a wonderful thing that in many ways hopefully for both of us and for the companies, we can lead the future from Poland and show what's possible with the deeper understanding as you've said about your customer, about the local audience of being able to understand the preferences and serving the content that they really want. And from our perspective, hopefully bring that to the AI world. Which brings me to the next question. Um you're steering a massive traditional TV and telco ship um into the AI era. What's the toughest part about deploying technology in an established company? Uh you know what? Because our company has such a long history, we've gone through so many technological transitions from SD to HD television, from 3G networks to 4G networks, to 5G networks. And so, obviously, AI poses a whole new set of challenges and it's a completely different beast. But at the same time, what's the most important at the end of the day is the culture within the company, the corporate culture which allows these ideas to develop and to flourish. So, one thing that's super important to me, for example, is allowing our managers, allowing our employees to travel to conferences abroad, to meet with people like you, to meet with different organizations, and then come back to Poland, and then share those ideas with us. Um because at the end of the day, as you said at the beginning, it's the people that create the company. Um and that's extremely important. and I think I remember, you know, when we met not so long ago, just within a couple of weeks, our teams got together, started working, started developing plans where we can cooperate, and so on and so forth. And I I I I was a bit surprised. Like, why has nobody thought of this before? Why has nobody come up to you guys, and why haven't we spoken before? And it really takes, uh you know, kind of these superpowers, I suppose, like you and me to just go around, um get to know people, travel around the world, and and bring in those technologies. And you know, we're such a large organization, and there are so many challenges that we face. It's It's so necessary to innovate and be elastic and evolve and move into the future. Because if you're not moving forward, you you just fall behind. And that was one of the biggest challenges when I took over is is really, um you know, respecting the history, but also kind of forcing the people to be like, "Guys, you have to deliver. Like, new times are here. Um AI is here. We have to introduce these products. We have to innovate. We have to deliver new new products to our customers other customers, otherwise we're just going to disappear." Um so, I suppose that that answers your questions. A lot of challenges, but it's but it's doable. It's possible. And you are definitely accelerating. The way you adopt the technology, bring this across is is is is is increasingly quicker. And I know And when we when we met, you spoke about some of the ways you use your AI personally as well. Uh Do you think the that acceleration is continuing uh across across the group? Oh, yeah. We see it um in our own company, we also see it across the market. I mean, you being here today and and having all these amazing people show up, business entrepreneurs, leaders, politicians, people from my own company showed up, which I didn't know before I got here, which is a funny story. Uh it's absolutely accelerating. Um and it is within our company and and I know you guys are having amazing results as Um and you know, you asked about competing with these global uh global companies which have infinite piles of money and so on and so forth. Um I think there's some local authenticity and local emotion that you can't create with an algorithm from across the world. And I know you're trying your best and and I I believe you will get there, but historically so far, it's it's not been possible to replicate the real emotion of the of the people here in Poland. So, let's get to something that both of us grew up with. Many of the audience uh uh um knows about. Where of course, in Poland, if you watch a foreign movie, all the voices, whether it's a male or female, were frequently narrated by single character, by a lector. And I would love to take get your take as how you see that future evolving as the AI voices become expressive, multilingual, open and break down language barriers. How's Posl thinking about it? How are you thinking about it? Well, from the customer and the business perspective, I suppose the answer is simple. It's um provide the customer with the choice at the end of the day, right? And if the customer wants the lector, then they can get it. Um if it can be AI generated, even better. It makes it faster, easier. You can do it multilingual. If you want it dubbed fully, that's also perfectly fine. You know, have a button on your remote control that you can press and just change it any way you like to. but I think what's more important is kind of what I was referring to earlier is that many people underestimate how important voice is and how important the emotion behind the voice is. Um and I have my own story from when I was little about this is many people here, I'm sure everybody here will know the movie Shrek. Um in Polish it was fully dubbed and my favorite uh character was obviously the character of the donkey. Uh dubbed by Jerzy Stuhr. Um and I watched the movie, I loved it and then a couple months, maybe a couple years later, I watched it in English. And the donkey was dubbed by Eddie Murphy. Amazing actor, amazing voice actor, absolutely no doubt about it, but I couldn't get used to it. To me it was just so off, so weird. And so, you know, the animations are the same, the donkey is the same, the jokes are more or less the same, but the the character behind the voice, the emotion within the voice was completely different. And and I think it's so amazing that you're putting in so much detail because I've seen some of your work, I've seen some of your demos, um into making sure that that emotion is really is really there behind that character. Um and I hope you continue to develop that and I hope we get, you know, Jerzy Stuhr in Shrek 6 or 7 or you know, whatever the next Shrek will be. Me too. Me It's It's as as you said, it's a lot about choice. Uh my partner is is is British and she and I frequently argue whether the Shrek in Polish is better or Shrek in English is better. Um that's unresolved. However, I completely agree that I hope what technology will enable is is is that you will be able to dub characters across plethora of different different languages and then hopefully the creative part of that that people can really elevate the experience with the human narration to another level and that blend of AI and and human creativity will continue. Um as you look into the future, 5 years from now, what will the media look like? Uh I wish I knew. Is the short answer. Um but the long answer is there's so much innovation and there's so much technological advancement going on in the world right now. The invention and and ability to use AI um is is is groundbreaking and and you're the best example of that and I'm sure you can speak a lot more to that. Uh but from my perspective, I would like to also use this opportunity to say that by the end of this year we'll be announcing our strategy for the Pulsat Plus Group. Um and a lot of our vision for the next 5 years, a lot of the vision for the media, a lot of the vision for the Telco segment for next 5 but also like 10 15 years um will be announced during that uh strategy call. Uh and I right before we went on stage, I invited you and you said you're going to be there. So in October, we're seeing Mati on stage uh for the Pulsat Plus Group announcement of our long-term strategy. So that's very exciting. Um but going back real quick to your question about the media sector, it's it's impossible to uh to predict what will happen in 5 years because of the rate of advancement. Um but our organization has progressed, uh developed, and adapted over the last 30 years. And I have absolutely no doubt that with our management, with the people who work for us, with our innovative spirit, you know, whatever the future will bring, we'll be right there. We'll be adapting. Um our conversation today is proof of the fact that, you know, we can do that and we will do that over the coming years. You also have a unique background where you worked on immersive media, on gaming. Do you think this will be part of the future where you maybe have interactive characters that you can talk on a screen or take from the movie into other experiences to be able to experience that in a whole new way? Oh yeah. I Sorry. Um I [snorts] I got excited by the interactive media and characters jumping out of the screen. Uh yes, absolutely. Um I remember a couple months ago I was in this interactive space with 3D goggles um and you had, you know, generated monsters jumping out at you and you had to move through a maze and all these kinds of things which which brings out the the the virtual experience into the real world and it really really touches you emotionally and you get to feel everything. And and with the advancement in AI voices, you could have people talking, you could recreate people from the past, from history, you could recreate, you know, famous speeches. Um and so absolutely this is something that we'll be looking into and hopefully hopefully we'll be utilizing um in the future. And and I look forward to our cooperation in that regard, certainly. [snorts] Hopefully also we can get Disney on board and have uh interactive donkey with Yaddle's voice voice uh with his permission as well as part of the experience. What's What's as you think about highest leverage applications first in Polsat, what would you say it is? Um well, for us I I I mentioned earlier we serve over 8 million customers. We provide over 20 million services here in Poland. Um and you know, occasionally, not often, but sometimes something breaks down. Uh we've all had this experience in the past. Um and so we have millions of points of contact with the client every single year, whether it's on customer service lines, whether it's in our uh shops where they can purchase our products. Um and we've all had the experience of calling a customer support line and being put on hold for 45 minutes and getting frustrated and like have like and at the end of the day they tell you to like restart the router and everything starts working. Um and I think that's one of the things which is uh the fastest to automate, but also extremely difficult Because people call in with a lot of emotion. They're very stressed out. Something's not working. They paid for something. They're angry. And and and you need to be able to talk to them and calm them down and explain to them, "Hey, there's a solution to this. You know, we'll refund you or you just have to do this." And and I remember you showing me your your demos a couple weeks ago where where you called the voice and and they're like, "Oh." And the AI voice is like, "Oh, I'm so sorry this happened to you. I feel so sad that this happened." Let me help you. And so that's absolutely amazing. And and that's one of the fastest and easiest places to cooperate because it's a huge optimization on costs. But it comes with a benefit to the consumer at the end of the day because the consumer will be happier. The consumer will be better off and have their problem solved faster. And the second one we talked about a bit earlier, which is obviously voice in media and content creation. So translations. I remember for the Polish members of the audience, we used to watch telenovela in Poland like Brazilian telenovela and they were super popular. And they were always in English with the lector as you mentioned. Well, now we can have them dubbed with real voices and and and everything. And so we could explore a lot of new avenues of content. We could also translate into different languages for the foreign audiences here in Poland as well. So those are two simple ones for for for AI voice. But in terms of AI in general, there's just so many different places we can expand into. I mean, optimizing trading patterns for energy, optimizing, you know, house purchasing prices for our real estate segment. There there's just so much we could do with that. So I'm very excited. And like you say, it's a golden era for consumer and customers that is coming across with a lot of that's just more immersive experience. You're on media, telco side, energy side. Where's majority of focus going? How do you split your time? How do you stay sane between those domains? that that's a good question. I I I split my time on everything. but you know, the core of our business has always been media and telecommunications. That would That's what we started with 30 years ago. That's what we're going to continue with for sure. but I can't go into too much detail until October, until I invite you to our long-term strategy presentation, and then I'll be able to say everything we're going to be doing. And it's going to be very exciting. Deal. I asked few people what should I wish you and um and I got few different responses. I got a response that I should wish you to double the stock price. I should wish you and us that you keep admitting Kevin Spacey down or Home Alone every Christmas. [applause] and to wish you persistence. So, I wish you all three. This will be a big big big big years ahead. Any other things that I should wish you as you think about um the next the next few years? Uh I think we've nearly doubled the stock price this year, so we're good on that one. Uh Kevin Spacey Home Alone should be coming back this year. I'll I'll triple-check for everyone. And and persistence I certainly need. So, a lot of persistence for the future, please. Piotr Peter, thank you so much for joining us. Don't leave us yet. Big round. Before we close it up, um it has been a busy day. It was a lot of organization. We had everybody from public uh uh from the government through to some of the leading entrepreneurs, uh to some of the leading voices come on the stage and a lot of the the future of what we are planning at 11 that we could show. But for any event like this, as many of you know, there's plenty of people behind the scenes making sure over last months and today that it all runs smoothly. So, I would like to ask few of the main people that made everything happen, Ash, Anthony, Franek, and Claudia. If you can stand up. If you're not here, because you're probably running some of the other things behind the scenes. Franek is there, I see. I see a person there. If I can ask for a big round of applause. And similarly, Beyond 11 Labs team, and there's so many other people that helped contribute each each building block. Amplify team, Warsaw City, Paderewski team. Similarly, if you are here, if you can stand up as well, and if we can add one more round of applause. And with that, we are closing 11 Labs Warsaw Summit this year, and hopefully see you next time. Thank you. Thank you.