IBC
Artificial Intelligence is a staple trope of film and TV plots from classics such as Bladerunner to recent Channel 4 series Humans, but AI is also emerging as a serious content creation tool.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Apple are among those now pouring millions of dollars into natural language processing, facial detection and sentiment analysis with the aim of using machine learning or cognitive computing for everything from automated cars to robot-run hotels, educational tools to manufacturing.
IBM CEO Ginny Rometty heralded 2016 as the dawn of “the cognitive era.” Research firm IDC predicts that AI will grow from $8 billion this year to $47 billion by 2020, at which time it will “eventually be built into all kinds of products and services.”
“That’s where we’re headed – AI everywhere,” states IDC chief analyst Frank Gens.
Sooner or later AI will also be a part of everyday media production and there are signs that this is already happening.
Insights provided by IBM's AI system Watson were used during Wimbledon this year to drive official social channels. Watson was also used to assemble video clips to help create the trailer for Fox sic-fi feature Morgan.
While a human editor crafted the end result, the use of a machine trained to ‘look’ for relevant clips was claimed to shave the best part of a month off the conventional post process.
A number of editing applications are using algorithms to analyse in-frame action and camera motion to partially or fully automate the logging, edit, grade and sound mix of anything from prosumer action videos to high shoot ratio documentaries.
There are suggestions that this software will encroach into professional post - either leading to the loss of assistant editing jobs or freeing up editors for more creative work, depending on your point of view.
IBM says it views Watson as an assistive tool which works in the sweet spot between computer and human expertise. Some prefer to dub this IA - or Intelligent Augmentation.
“Perhaps in the near future, Artificial Intelligence systems will take advantage of this metadata and take things to an entirely new level by using metadata along with complex search algorithms to find new relationships between media and audience interest,” suggests David Schleifer, COO, Primestream. “Technology such as speech-to-text, voice-search systems like Siri, Cortana and Alexa are all maturing into powerful tools that will improve how we search and find what we are looking for. Properly catalogued media gives the broadcaster more opportunities to leverage their libraries to the public.”
From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Ex Machina via Terminator, Hollywood has tended to view AI as a dystopian vision. Even today the prevailing - dismissive - view is that machines are only as smart as the data you give them. Yet, given time, it may be possible for an AI to synthesise human creativity.
AI is being experimented with on the fringes of Hollywood. Sunspring, a short film shown at this year’s Sundance film festival was scripted by a computer programme.
At the Cannes Lions festival in June, a pop promo produced by agency Saatchi & Saatchi was scripted and directed (using drones) entirely by AI. Even the casting was done by a program that examined electroencephalogram (EEG) brain data from actors and matched them to the emotions it had detected in the song and its singer.
Canadian data-analysis company Greenlight Essentials has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first feature film co-written by artificial intelligence.
Logically, a machine will only be as intelligent as the data with which it is fed and humans will always have the edge on Emotional Intelligence - the ability to identify our own emotions and to empathise with those of others. It’s a crucial part of the creative process.
Yet it would be foolish to ignore the trend toward using data to assist the production process - and who knows - in the creative process too.
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