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Bringing Entertainment Home
Media Play News
December 22, 2024
What better way to kick off our very first feature on the 20 most creative and transformative uses of artificial intelligence in the digital and home entertainment industry than to ask AI to write the intro?
So here, with a little human editing, is what AI has to say about, well, AI:
Artificial intelligence (AI) has many creative uses in entertainment, including:
That’s a pretty broad list, and one we took it upon ourselves to narrow down to 20 particularly groundbreaking ways in which artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping the entertainment landscape — and transforming the way stories are told, shared and enjoyed.
Cineverse
In a year of groundbreaking innovations in AI technology, Cineverse’s development of cineSearch stands out as a game-changer for content discovery. Unveiled in May 2024, this AI-driven platform redefines how viewers search for and discover movies and TV shows. In a streaming landscape with search times averaging over 10 minutes, cineSearch is designed to connect viewers to personalized recommendations more effectively than ever before. At its heart is Ava, a conversational AI chatbot that channels the expertise of a seasoned film aficionado. Ava doesn’t just help users find what to watch. She offers highly personalized recommendations based on a vast array of criteria including genre, plot and cast, as well as such subjective dimensions as tone, mood, setting and theme. By accessing metadata from more than 2 million titles as well the user’s own viewing history from the leading streaming services, cineSearch turns the hunt for content into an engaging entertaining experience. For streaming platforms, cineSearch promises to tackle two major pain points — user engagement and subscriber churn. It addresses these issues by delivering accurate content recommendations, directly linking viewers to titles on their preferred streaming platforms. The success of cineSearch is rooted in the extensive capabilities of Cineverse’s Matchpoint technology platform and Google’s Gemini LLM.
Max
Warner Bros. Discovery in September announced a partnership with Google to utilize Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to generate captions for its Max streaming platform. WBD said that what is known internally as Caption AI will initially be used for Max’s unscripted shows and could shave up to 50% off caption-related costs — in addition to reducing caption file creation time by 80% and improving accuracy, a longstanding problem in the streaming world. Vertex AI is a unified artificial intelligence development platform for building and using generative AI. WBD notes that “captioning has traditionally been a labor-intensive and time-consuming process,” but cautions that “to maintain high levels of accuracy,” there will still be “human-oversight for quality assurance.” According to WBD, “this data-
driven approach enables Warner Bros. Discovery to continuously refine and train the caption AI workflow, further reducing errors and striving to deliver consistently precise captions.” “Providing viewers with high-quality captions is incredibly important to Warner Bros. Discovery,” said Avi Saxena, CTO for Direct-to-Consumer at Warner Bros. Discovery. “Working with Google Cloud to utilize Vertex AI within Warner Bros. Discovery’s caption AI workflow has not only helped to accelerate our captioning process, but also has improved our efficiency and speed, while reducing costs.”
Max
Warner Bros. Discovery in November announced it is rolling out two new AI-powered interactive ad solutions that enable Max viewers to buy, in real-time, select products marketed on select programming. Both solutions are the result of incorporating KERV’s AI-enhanced technology into WBDs AdTech platform. “Shop with Max” uses AI to identify products in movies and shows, pair them with advertiser products, and then redirect the consumer, through a QR code, to a second screen where they can buy these products. “Moments” aligns brands with thematic content. Powered by KERV’s advanced AI technology, “Moments” uses audio and visual cues to identify relevant themes, sentiment and on-screen elements. Through 40 curated “Moments,” such as Cooking, Real Estate, Gaming, and Science & Space, Moments enables partners to reach audiences engaged with specific topics that align with their messaging across the entire Max portfolio. “By closely partnering with KERV, we’re redefining how audiences discover and engage with products while creating deeper connections between brands and our iconic portfolio of premium content and IP across Max,” said Ryan Gould, head of advanced advertising and digital ad sales for Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD first teased the shoppable, contextual, interactive and video ad formats technology in May at industry Upfronts in New York City.
Whip Media
Whip Media is making significant strides with innovative AI tools that are reshaping how FAST channels and AVOD platforms operate. The company’s SaaS platform integrates advanced AI solutions to enhance audience engagement, streamline operations and drive smarter content decisions. Managing content performance data from multiple sources has long been a cumbersome task for FAST and AVOD players, but Whip Media tackles this challenge with AI-enhanced Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The
platform retrieves and updates data in real time, providing a comprehensive and accurate view of content performance. This level of automation not only saves time but also allows platforms to make faster, data-driven decisions. Another key feature of Whip Media’s platform is its advanced title-matching technology. By leveraging AI to align content titles across different platforms, it minimizes errors and delivers precise cross-platform insights. This enables streaming services to better understand how their content performs, and to refine strategies for reaching and retaining viewers. Whip Media is also breaking new ground with data tools designed to predict content trends. Its real-time sentiment analysis uses advanced algorithms to gauge audience emotions and uncover trends, providing insights into what resonates with viewers. And its predictive content analytics combine qualitative and quantitative data to forecast future
engagement, helping platforms maximize the return on their content investments.
DTS
DTS Clear Dialogue is an on-device solution that leverages the latest advancements in AI-based audio processing to improve dialogue intelligibility for TV audio, delivering a clearer and more personalized audio experience for consumers at home. DTS Clear Dialogue addresses one of the biggest audio complaints from consumers — not being able to clearly understand spoken onscreen dialogue. Reasons for this problem include device limitations, inconsistent audio across content sources, environmental noise or individual hearing abilities. DTS Clear Dialogue provides consumers with the ability to personalize and optimize their audio experience to improve understanding of dialogue. It leverages AI audio processing innovation and machine learning techniques to identify, separate and enhance dialogue so listeners can better understand it. The solution is language-inclusive and agnostic to content type (movies, TV shows, sports, live events, etc.). DTS Clear Dialogue for TV OEMs can identify and separate virtually any element within an audio program to optimize its performance. It can distinguish between elements such as dialogue, music and special effects and give users control to create personalized profiles with dialogue and non-dialogue settings, to address hearing impairment, listening environments and audio preferences for varying conditions. In a survey by Xperi, 79% of consumers said that DTS Clear Dialogue would increase their interest in a smart TV that offered it. Top use cases included when actors do not speak clearly (40%), non-dialogue audio elements are too loud (38%), viewers want to watch at a lower overall volume to avoid disturbing others (35%), and the TV-watching environment is too noisy (34%).
Spherex
SpherexAI offers an advanced AI solution for generating age ratings and ensuring video content complies with local regulations for any global market. Preparing content for global distribution requires significant time and resources. SpherexAI addresses this challenge by streamlining the process, which can now be completed in days rather than weeks or months. SpherexAI provides a range of services to meet the needs and budgets of M&E entertainment companies, including content creators, distributors, service providers, broadcasters and streamers:
Spherex’s APIs allow seamless integration into existing workflows. Spherex has earned the trust and confidence of regulators worldwide due to its consistent ability to provide accurate and compliant video content analysis and age ratings. This collaboration ensures that Spherex’s ratings and compliance checks are accepted by official boards, making it the only commercial provider of local age ratings globally. Spherex was an AWS Intelligent QC solution partner at IBC 2024 to help media companies with video compliance and age ratings worldwide.
TCL
TCL Studios is a production hub aimed at incubating and building the AI creative community through the development of both scripted and unscripted projects. In partnership with key Hollywood talent, it seeks to demystify the process surrounding AI animation and is presently working in long-form and short-form content. This new initiative spawned TCL Film Machine, an accelerator program that aims to alleviate some of the fears around AI by bringing in experienced Hollywood talent and providing the opportunity to create compelling, story-driven short films. Five directors were chosen based on their passion for learning, their desire to implement AI into future Hollywood projects, their unique and creative perspectives, and their professional backgrounds. The TCL Studios team supported each filmmaker chosen for this inaugural undertaking using the most advanced AI tools and technology for storyboarding, animating and editing. The pipeline program provided customized development and financial and production support to each creative, resulting in a slate of five short films. Each director (and film) explored different genres and styles that best conveyed their story: from a docufiction tale tracing the unlikely survival of a mountaineer, to a young girl racing against the clock to realize her dream in an epic sci-fi world, to a horror story following a long-suffering woman undergoing a shocking body transformation.
Lionsgate
Lionsgate recently entered into a partnership with leading applied AI research company Runway to explore the use of AI in film pre-production and post-production processes. The agreement, one of a series of AI initiatives that Lionsgate is undertaking, gives Runway access to a group of titles from Lionsgate’s rich content library of movies and shows in exchange for creating and training a proprietary in-house AI video-generation model for the studio’s use and the use of filmmakers it designates. This new model is expected to create opportunities for new efficiencies in the studio’s pre-production, production, post-production and marketing processes, with particular emphasis on storyboarding and previsualization. Several filmmakers are already using the AI model, which is intended to serve as a supplemental tool for the studio’s talent family. It will not be used for producing movies and TV shows or for replicating talent likenesses. Separate from the Runway partnership, the studio is also exploring opportunities to use AI to increase efficiency and targeting in the licensing of its 20,000-plus-title film and television library.
Netflix
All the big streamers use AI to help recommend movies and shows to subscribers, but Netflix’s AI-powered recommendation engine was the first — and remains the best. Indeed, observers credit it with playing a key role in Netflix’s success in the increasingly competitive subscription streaming arena. The Netflix AI recommendation engine is responsible for making recommendations based on viewer preferences and myriad other factors. The Netflix algorithm curates all user pages and identifies patterns in their rating and watching histories. Data, both explicit and implicit, is collected, ranging from thumb’s up or thumb’s down clicks to the amount of time spent watching certain content, the location the viewer is streaming from, binge patterns and more. Data from Netflix’s 282 million-plus subscribers is constantly being crunched and analyzed, with the goal of providing increasingly more accurate recommendations. A key part of this is personalized, automatically generated thumbnails, as they influence viewers to watch specific content — almost like clickbait. Netflix AI also helps the streamer improve video quality and combat buffering. The machine-learning algorithm predicts viewer patterns to determine when and where network traffic congestion in various regions will occur. The streamer then gets to work caching the regional servers closest to viewers to shorten loading times and minimize buffering. The overall goal of Netflix AI is to constantly improve the user experience, which in turn is the key to maintaining loyalty and lowering churn.
Channel 1
Video intelligence system company Channel 1 has designed its AI-powered First Cut and Prism solutions to help companies distribute streaming video. First Cut enables teams to transform raw assets into polished, platform-ready videos through an interface that provides complete editorial control at every step. The platform also streamlines content creation by connecting to organizations’ existing content libraries, trusted sources, and licensed content partners while maintaining enterprise-grade quality standards. The platform automates scriptwriting, video editing, audio mixing, graphics, and even generates AI presenters and voiceovers, all while integrating with licensed media partners to provide maximum flexibility. Editors can review and finalize videos in minutes. The AI-powered
solution Prism transforms existing content into a variety of formats customized for every platform and audience. Videos can be quickly adapted and then distributed to linear, VOD, FAST or social media platforms in more than 30 languages. Prism enhances content localization and distribution across platforms, unlocking new opportunities for an expanded audience for streaming services. Utilizing AI, Prism adapts videos for specific languages, styles, and cultural nuances. The solution tailors outputs for seamless delivery to social channels, enabling media organizations to grow their reach efficiently.
Paramount+
Paramount+ in October said it is leveraging generative AI to create new curations of collections that feature “kids-first” content for families. The new collections are now available for subscribers with “Older Kids” profiles, for viewers between the ages of 6 and 13. In addition to serving this audience, the feature also enhances the platform’s ability to promote new and library series that the subscriber hasn’t seen before. The curated collections are based on the premise that kids and family viewers are frequently drawn to certain themes within shows — a premise that came as a result of research studies in which Paramount+ team members spoke directly to kids and parents and identified the most resonant themes, such as “Space Exploration,” “Goofy Stuff,” “Daring Stunts,” “Treasure Hunting,” “Secret Worlds” and “Exploring Nature.” The service then employed generative AI to create new curations of its content library around those themes. Throughout the process, Paramount+ employs curation teams to validate the AI-generated elements, according to the service. Paramount’s library of kid-friendly content includes such Nickelodeon favorites as “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Dora the Explorer,” “Fairly OddParents” and “Rugrats.”
Prime Video
Amazon’s signature streaming service is using AI to get viewers up to speed on their favorite TV shows without wasting time digging around the internet or risking spoilers. X-Ray Recaps is a generative AI-powered feature that creates brief, easy-to-digest summaries of full seasons, single episodes, and even parts of episodes, all personalized down to the exact minute of where you are watching. “Whether you’re a few minutes into a new episode, halfway through a season, or took a break from watching a series and need a refresher, X-Ray Recaps delivers short textual snippets of key cliffhangers, character-driven plot points, and other details that can be accessed at any point in your viewing experience,” Amazon stated in a November 2024 blog post. “With the creation of X-Ray Recaps, we’re directly addressing a common problem customers face when streaming content: forgetting where they left off,” said Adam Gray, VP of Product at Prime Video. X-Ray Recaps is powered by Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed AWS service for building and scaling generative AI applications with foundational models. Using a combination of Amazon Bedrock models and custom AI models trained on Amazon Sagemaker, X-Ray Recaps analyzes various video segments, combined with subtitles or dialogue, to generate detailed descriptions of key events, places, times and conversations. “Our vision is that with the power of generative AI, we will create customized, optimized and meaningful experience for our global Prime Video customers,” said Girish Bajaj, VP of Technology at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios.
Prime Video
Audio Description is a form of narration that describes the key visual elements of a movie or show to make it more accessible to blind and visually impaired customers. According to Amazon, “The use of AI brings us closer to a world where audio description tracks are as commonly available as captions and has helped Prime Video create the largest library of audio descriptions in the U.S. AI identifies any gaps in the dialogue, which helps our production teams build audio description scripts faster.”
Peacock
NBCUniversal in July announced plans to use AI to re-create celebrated announcer Al Michaels’ voice for custom recaps during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Powered by generative AI and AI voice synthesis technology, “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock” provided fans with their own customized playlists featuring highlights of the events most relevant to them from the previous day. Each compilation included clips from NBCU’s Olympics coverage and was narrated by a high-quality AI re-creation of Michaels’ voice, which was trained using his past appearances on NBC and, according to a press release at the time, matched “his signature expertise and elocution.” (Ironically, Michaels is also the play-by-play announcer for rival streamer Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football.”) The service was available to Peacock subscribers throughout the Olympics on all supported Web browsers as well as on the Peacock app on select mobile and tablet devices. Michaels said he was initially skeptical, but once he saw a demonstration “detailing what they had in mind, I said, ‘I’m in.’” Peacock said nearly 7 million personalized variants of “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock” could be streamed across the U.S. during the Games — all generated by pulling from NBCUniversal’s 5,000 hours of live coverage from Paris, where up to 40 Olympics events were happening concurrently each day.
Disney+ Hotstar
Disney+ Hotstar — India’s leading SVOD service, which is partially owned by Disney — in September rolled out an AI-powered video optimization technology that allows subscribers to use less data without sacrificing video quality. The new tool also promises a 25% reduction in data size when downloading videos for offline viewing — a timely achievement, given Disney+ Hotstar’s announcement a month earlier that it will stream select matches in the Premier League’s 2024-25 schedule in 4K resolution. This feature is aimed at making Disney+ Hotstar content more accessible to users with limited data. Most of India’s internet subscribers are mobile; India has 850 million internet customers, more than twice the U.S. population. Only China, with 1 billion customers, has more. In a press release, Disney+ Hotstar stated its new AI-powered video optimization technology is essentially an advanced encoding feature that uses AI to understand viewer consumption patterns as well as the context and complexity around each scene in the movie or show being streamed. At launch, the new technology was already implemented in more than 700 titles available on the Disney+ Hotstar platform, which under a merger deal that closed in November is now jointly owned by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, its subsidiary Viacom18, and Disney.
Vizio
Pioneering CTV leader Vizio in September announced a partnership with KERV to expand its interactive CTV advertising capabilities. KERV, which is involved in AI-powered video analysis, performance and monetization, powers many entertainment companies’ automated intelligence efforts, including Disney+, Paramount+, YouTube, Peacock and Max (shoppable ads). The partnership aims to help brands shorten the path to purchase while building brand awareness, intent and loyalty. KERV’s AI-powered image recognition technology has ingested, analyzed, and processed millions of hours of video content. It transforms videos into immersive, interactive and shoppable experiences by identifying objects with greater accuracy than the naked eye. Not only can it recognize products, but it can also link them to specific product feeds and URLs, even finding the closest matches when an exact correlation isn’t present. “At our core, Vizio’s business has always been based on providing the best possible experience for our customers at home, and delivering richer, more-engaging ad experiences,” said Allison Clarke, head of general market national advertising sales at Vizio Ads. “Our partnership with KERV allows us to take this even further by leveraging their advanced AI technology to create highly personalized and interactive campaigns.” KERV says that layering interactivity into video creative can increase brand favorability, search intent, and purchase intent by as much as 1.5 times, while customizing QR codes and end frames has increased scan rates by two to three times.
Spotter
Spotter’s AI-driven video ideation software is an all-in-one suite designed exclusively for YouTube creators to ideate concepts, discover trends, and manage workflow. It serves as a brainstorming partner, project planner, and research co-pilot, providing data-driven, channel-specific recommendations. The platform’s key features include Brainstorm, Outliers, Projects and Labs. Brainstorm provides personalized titles, concepts and thumbnails based on channel content style and performance. Outliers helps creators find top-performing videos and trends using data from upwards of 50 million videos. Projects centralizes video production, enabling teams to organize content and integrate YouTube A/B testing and Discord community feedback. Spotter Studio was developed through conversations at the company’s annual Spotter Summit, with input from top creators including MrBeast, Dude Perfect and others. The software democratizes access to advanced technology and best practices previously available only to top-earning creators, helping level the playing field for sustainable success. Early beta results showed creators achieving a 49% increase in video views in the first seven days compared to videos made without Spotter Studio, with 1.1 billion total views across all videos developed using the software. More than 350,000 video titles, thumbnails and concepts have been generated with Spotter Studio’s AI.
XL8
The globalization of the media industry took center stage in 2024. Top streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon prioritized international productions and acquisitions over expensive originals filmed in the United States. There has never been a more critical time for media companies in entertainment, news and sports to have the translation tools and localization in place to meet the needs of global audiences. XL8’s suite of proprietary AI tools, which includes MediaCAT and EventCAT, help minimize, or eliminate altogether, language barriers across the globe for both live events and file-based content. For media and entertainment localization, MediaCAT features seamless subtitle creation and translation, incorporating precise context with local cultures and their respective languages, as well as the ability to layer in AI dubbing. Its biggest benefit is significantly reducing the time required for human linguists to edit translations. EventCAT is XL8’s real-time AI captioning and translation solution for online news, sports and hybrid events.
PBS Kids
As entertainment companies race to leverage AI, PBS Kids is pushing the boundaries of innovation in a unique way. The company is working to integrate AI-assisted technology into interactive episodes of popular series “Lyla in the Loop” and “Elinor Wonders Why,” which will come to the PBS Kids platforms at a later date. Developed in collaboration with series producers and researchers at the University of California at Irvine and Harvard University under grants from the National Science Foundation, the interactive episodes will allow characters from the series to ask viewers questions and, by utilizing AI technology, understand what the viewers are saying when they verbally respond to prompts within an episode. The characters will then respond to users with pre-programmed responses written by series writers, using AI-assisted intent detection. No AI used in these episodes is generative, and none of the technology replaces humans, who are a critical part of the development of these interactive episodes as well as the overall series. Preliminary research in which interactive “Elinor Wonders Why” episodes were tested — the main character, a bunny, asks the viewer questions and responds based on the answers — showed that AI technology can boost the learning benefits of children’s content. Subsequent research has shown that such interactivity offers greater learning gains than non-interactive episodes.
PBS
PBS experimented with using AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to automatically generate quizzes for the upcoming season of “Call the Midwife,” a British period drama series about a group of nurse midwives working in the East End of London in the late 1950s and 1960s that airs on PBS stations and streams on Netflix, with individual episodes and seasons available on an a la carte basis at Prime Video, Fandango at Home and other services. The AI-powered quiz-generation system uses show transcripts, program descriptions, and wiki pages to create questions, matching them with appropriate imagery. While the generated quizzes still require final human review before being delivered to the website, this automation significantly speeds up PBS content teams’ ability to create engaging content. PBS says weekly quizzes have proved to drive more audience engagement, and this tool makes their production much more efficient.
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Promise is a new studio built from the ground up to drive storytelling innovation in the era of Generative AI. Promise has been formed to produce films and series, and explore new formats in collaboration with leading Gen AI artists and storytellers using a reimagined production process enabled by proprietary software. Founded by Fullscreen CEO George Strompolos, former YouTube content executive Jamie Byrne, and Gen AI innovator Dave Clark, the studio is focused on creating original stories for global audiences. Strompolos and Byrne were instrumental in the development of YouTube and the early creator economy. Clark is an independent filmmaker whose work with Gen AI combines technical artistry with a strong foundation in narrative. Investors in the studio include Peter Chernin of The North Road Co. and Andrew Chen of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Promise is developing a software product called MUSE, a production workflow system that integrates Gen AI technology throughout the creative process in a streamlined, collaborative and secure production environment. “We are investing in a new class of Gen AI talent who blend traditional filmmaking chops with cutting-edge technical expertise, setting a new standard for high-quality storytelling enabled by AI,” Strompolos said. “We believe this is a transformational moment in entertainment.”
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