Here’s What’ll Happen When AI Gives Consumers Total Content Control

NAB

The rise of hyper-realistic synthetic media may also be accompanied by AI technologies that enable infinite versions of content to be generated and controlled by individual consumers, according to panelists speaking at Cannes Next conference.

article here

Speakers including Hovhannes Avoyan, co-founder and CEO of Picsart, suggest that the border between consumption and creation will end up being very thin, even nonexistent.

“Infinite could be generated and rather than algorithms pushing content to us, individuals will be able to control hyper personalized experiences,” he said as part of the panel discussion, “AI Apocalypse or Revolution? Rethinking Creativity, Content & Cinema in the Age of AI,” hosted by The Hollywood Reporter.

“If you really do come up with personalization of the content, it ultimately could mean that you can watch the same movie a different way that I watch the movie,” Avoyan said. “It means you will be in control of what you’re going to see. You can make your own movie and you don’t even need distribution hubs to get this. You can generate a movie on-the-fly and you don’t even need to go to Netflix to do it.”

Picsart is a suite of online photo and video editing applications. Avoyan said he believes that AI tools like these are not going to replace people but instead will enhance productivity.

“Think about AI is like a co-pilot,” he explained. “It’s a mentor, a helper, an assistant to get jobs done. It can take the most labor-intensive work and let you [get on] with the more fun, cool and creative part — making creativity more affordable and accessible. We can say [generative AI] is democratizing creativity.”

However, whether and how you use AI is up to us, he insists.

“I believe the competition will be between people who are using AI versus those who are not. And people using AI are going to be 10 times more productive, versus people that are not using AI tools. [those with AI skills] are going to be taking the jobs of other people.”

Also on the panel was Anna Bulakh, head of ethics and partnerships at Respeecher, an AI startup behind the voice of Darth Vader in recent editions of the Star Wars universe. She explained how Respeecher created a synthetic voice based on two to 30 minutes of a person’s voice recordings. Respeecher has a library of voices available for use on anything from audiobooks to ads with permissions.

“What it means that we preserve all emotions, intonations and language agnostic, so all languages are covered. It means that your vocal is part of biometric data,” Bulakh said.

The speakers were also keen to label their work as “synthetic media” — that is, digital content created for the creative media industry, as distinct from deepfakes, which have more negative and possibly illegal connotations.