We face an emerging golden era of Artificial Intelligence technology, commonly known as AI, and the possibilities are endless. From the laboratories, AI technology is now being integrated into various industries like fintech, pharma, and IT, just to name a few. The media and entertainment landscape are now being transformed by this technology as well. From concept to content delivery and audience engagement, AI is revolutionising the industry. Ai is making it possible to blend computer-generated movie characters with their human counterparts seamlessly. Audiences don’t even know the difference because things like gait, musculature, and also emotional expression are intuitive and incredibly life-like.
There are more applications of this technology in the world of media and entertainment—like in games, movie production, gambling services, and the like. Here are areas of the media industry where AI technology’s game-changing advantage is being utilized:
Making movie production a lot easier
In the movie production industry, some tasks complicate the movie production process. Writing scripts, breaking them down, location-hunting, creating shot-lists, drafting budgets, managing schedules, and the like require much workforce, time, and resources to get done. AI comes in to streamline the movie production process by completing time-consuming tasks in no time. The creative team behind the movies we love can now focus on creative production more efficiently.
Marketing in the movie industry can also be automated with AI Technology. Today, studios spend millions on production and marketing alone. Trailers, posters, commercials are all expensive. With the addition of AI, studios and production houses can “train” AI using various multimedia content, including text, images, and videos, to generate different design concepts automatically. AI will then be able to create movie posters and promotional videos instantly. At some point, it’s going to be able to create a full-fledged trailer on its own.
A better NPC reaction in the video games
One of the most popular additions to the single-player game is non-player characters (NPCs). NPCs are the fictitious characters that fill the gameplay and react to the actual player’s movement and actions. For instance, when they see a player, they start shooting at him/her, while when a player begins shooting, the NPCs hide behind walls and obstacles.
The current NPCs are already intuitive in some way, performing AI-like functions like analysing players’ actions to improve their response over time. As AI technology develops, the games will feature NPCs even in multiplayer mode to make content easier to moderate and more engaging. The higher the user engagement, the better for game developers, of course.
Studios and streaming platforms can also collaborate with government agencies and censoring bodies to come up with various restrictive mechanisms to safeguard audiences, especially minors, better. These tasks of content classification and ratings can be wholly delegated to AI. The AI can automatically conduct comprehensive scans of all images and videos per frame and identify explicit content. AI can also process spoken language, trace offensive speech, and any kind of language that will be programmed into it to consider as unauthorized.
Taking content personalisation to the next level
Nowadays, many entertainment providers use content personalisation to offer user-specific content and services. Apple Music platform now analyses the user’s listening history to provide them with tracks and playlists based on their apparent music taste.
AI-driven content personalisation can cross-reference different media platforms and combine various offers based on them. It will be a big plus for advertizers because it makes optimizes their marketing campaigns as well. Countries with slower internet speeds can also make use of AI technology. AI can analyse connection speeds and compress the content in a way that doesn’t necessarily sacrifice the quality too much.
Deep Learning
Deep learning deals with unstructured data, making it ideal for image, video, speech, and text analytics. Media houses rely on advance analytics using various parameters from the customer data like demographics, current trends, market scenarios, and the like and incorporate the AI-based content improvements with dynamic ad insertions into their offerings to enhance the contextualization customer experience through trigger, context, intention, and insight enriching customer experience through AI.
Cognitive AI
Cognitive technologies (AI, ML, and NLP) facilitate turning insignificant, unstructured pieces of user information into structured, correlated, and meaningful data, putting them into multiple categorized databases for the advantage of the companies providing unique insights for better customer engagements, improved and attractive targeted content and higher monetisation.
For instance, more and more consumers use digital to engage with the celebrities they follow, that 68% of CMOs report being unprepared for the growth in social data. Ampsy is bringing solutions together with IBM’s AI, Watson, working together to help brands, such as Jimmy Kimmel Live, tackle difficult marketing challenges in the entertainment industry. With millions of social posts generated each day, an increasing number of marketers rely on Ampsy automatically aggregate fan’s posts and categorize them across channels in an easy-to-read dashboard. Ampsy also uses geofencing capabilities to capture posts that occur in a certain location, as well as the Sentiment Analysis API that reports on the personality of their audience. It helps their clients quickly engage with the fans and influencers that will increase their brand exposure. By doing so, they are creating a digital VIP experience for their fans.
AR/VR
AI helps develop AR/VR interactive content based on the storyline and themes for content, gaming, and events. The 360° view of the live event is captured and enhanced using AI techniques to give viewers the feel of the “live” event. AI enhances personalized shopping experience. It also facilitates the creation of VR sports events, fantasy leagues, and proactive engagement of viewers resulting in predictive merchandize options for the organizers. AI provides a predictive analysis (pitch report, weather report, team report, crowd report) to organizers.
AI is applied to movies to conduct visual analysis that tracks emotions alongside audio analysis of music and tone of voice.
The AI-based AR/VR kiosks at malls, airports, and other prominent places are drawing customers to ‘feel’ the products and services. Development of VR content for live events, reality shows, food shows based on AI garners more eyeballs.
Real-time Streaming
Real-time streaming is useful for the broadcaster/transmitter and the customer. AI helps in real-time customisation, packaging, and transmission of content, enriching the viewers’ experience. It also facilitates improved advertizement sales through targeted ad insertions. The digital billboard replacement solutions maximize ad revenues from live sports events.
Predictive Analytics
Analytics of viral media content can be used to determine the preferred content by audiences. Advanced analytics capabilities are critical in altering content, marketing plans, offerings, and distribution windows. It can also be used to deliver the right content to viewers and identify which content drives earnings.
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| Image Source: WTBX |
Industry Leaders Implementing AI
- Salesforce Einstein - According to Salesforce, 60% of market leaders think AI can help them run more effectively and will assist with better decision making while providing publishers, advertizers, and agencies with improved recommendations, in their aim to focus more on their customers. Salesforce began using Salesforce Einstein, with AI capabilities like predictivity, automation, and personalized customer experiences. All of this aims to eliminate repetitive and time-intensive processes. AI-powered Einstein can help media companies analyse data to deliver more accurate predictions and recommendations based on their unique business processes. Salesforce users will start to adapt Einstein capabilities soon, like Vox Media, NBCUniversal, Pandora, and EA.
- Netflix - Netflix’s success has an AI-driven focus on personalisation and customisation. In May 2019, Netflix announced the development of its workflow management and scheduling application, Meson, to manage it’s various machine learning pipeline, which builds, trains, and validates personalisation algorithms, which is responsible for providing video recommendations. Netflix uses AI, Machine Learning & Data in the following:
- Personalized Movie Recommendations
- Personalisation and Auto-Generation of Thumbnails
- Movie Editing
- Streaming Quality
- IBM Watson Media - IBM introduced its AI engine Watson in 2018 aimed to make efficient media based on data and AI. With Watson Media Solutions, it allows media companies to infuse AI throughout their media workflow or video library, ultimately improving viewer engagement, video analytics, delivery, and monetisation. It was recently awarded the 2018 Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Award Winner for Enterprise Video Platform, having two solutions in this category including their “Video Distribution & Workflow” which aims to alleviate the complexity of ingesting, compiling and preparing both metadata and video assets for delivery to virtually any screen.
- Spotify – with more than 150 million active listeners, Spotify is now the largest on-demand music service in the world. The best spotify smm panel in the world. All ages peoples and music lovers are gathering there. If you are a music artist or social media manager and want to grow your own or customers' Spotify account, we can help. It is known for going beyond technological boundaries with the use of big data, AI, and machine learning. The app uses AI to connect with users, create daily playlists based on what you’ve been listening to previously, while also suggesting new artists or albums that you may like. It can identify users favourite genres, artists, and languages and create the right mix of recommendations for each user. Spotify is a data-driven organisation. Daily, Spotify users create 600 gigabytes of data, which is used to perfect algorithms and machines to improve customer experiences and extrapolate insights.
- Amazon - Amazon is advancing steadily as an advertising technology and services vendor, generating $1.5 billion in ad revenues. It is also has a robust advertising exchange that offers a “header bidding” programmatic advertising solution to publishers while providing search advertising through its A9 division, where it can place ads on publisher’s pages while storing advertising inventory on Amazon. But it is Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts for more than 71% of the company’s total operating income, which many media companies are utilising. The benefits of using AWS artificial intelligence capabilities include:
- Fast insights
- Simplified data analytics
- Increased content recirculation
- Reduced complexity
Cybersecurity Alongside AI Technology Integration
As AI continues to pervade the media industry, so does the need for heightened cybersecurity measures. Remembering that media serves millions upon millions, it is crucial to bolster cybersecurity in all integration of technology to secure the masses consuming media. AI can also help cybersecurity analysts in the media industry to identify critical threats. A report by Capgemini Research Institute reveals that AI-enabled response to cyber threats is the new frontier for cybersecurity as hackers are already using AI for cybersecurity attacks. Three out of four executives say that using AI allows their organization to respond faster to breaches, and a majority of organizations say that AI lowers the cost of detecting and responding to breaches by 12%, on average. So as we integrate AI technology to make our media and entertainment experience richer, more dynamic, and advanced, we have to have robust cybersecurity measures running alongside our use of AI technology to protect our business from online hackers and cyberattacks.
Conclusion: Golden Era of Media Brought by AI Technology
The media industry is again experiencing another golden era as AI breathes new life into the industry. We could expect more innovations in the future, integrating Artificial Intelligence and even Machine Learning into our user experience. AI is transforming the media and entertainment space. It is, for sure, playing a significant role in improving the efficiency of processes involved in the entertainment world. The spending on artificial intelligence in the media and entertainment industry is expected to increase from $329 million in 2019 to US$1.86 by 2025. We can look forward to brighter days in the media and entertainment as AI technology makes a fascinating future in all spheres for sure.
Author’s Bio John Ocampos is an Opera Singer by profession and a member of the Philippine Tenors. Ever since, Digital Marketing has always been his forte. He is the Founder of SEO-Guru, and the Managing Director of Tech Hacker. John is also the Strategic SEO and Influencer Marketing Manager of Softvire Australia - the leading software eCommerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand.
