Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered by many as the next big revolution. The technology is currently in its infancy stage but is now recognized for the development of online chatbots, which looks set to become even bigger in the years to come.

According to Innovation Enterprise, for example, chatbots will power 85% of customer service by 2020. Why? Because chatbots allow businesses to provide customer service 24/7 while keeping costs down. That’s not all, chatbots also provide instant responses, meaning that customers don’t have to queue for several minutes waiting to be attended to. These perks are poised to cut business costs by at least $8 billion in 2020 according to Impactbnd.com.  

Today, though, we want to focus exclusively on how AI is impacting the media industry.

The Technology Has Already Arrived in Media

Let’s begin with a few real-life examples of AI in the media industry. Most industry players already boast some AI-powered solution within their business workflows.

Netflix, for example, can be called a pioneer here because of its intelligent cast compilation and viewer data analytics, e.g., “House of Cards.” The sophisticated, deep learning, computer vision algorithm applied to its recommendation engine is beyond industry standards and is still evolving. Not to mention the company’s video encoding technology which analyzes each shot in a video and compresses it without affecting the image quality thus reducing the amount of data used.

Another example of AI in the media industry is when 20th Century Fox and IBM used Watson IPIs and machine learning techniques to analyze hundreds of horror and thriller movie trailers. After learning what terrifies audiences, the AI system suggested the top 10 moments for a trailer from Morgan’s movie, which an IBM filmmaker edited and put together. This happened almost two years ago and since then, 20th Century Fox has used AI and deep learning models to predict which audience will most likely see a film based on the trailer. The film company can accurately predict audience type and attendance for existing movies as well as movies to be released.

The same is true for other media and entertainment giants. Disney is working hard on mixed reality and augmented reality projects, robotics, human-computer interaction and computer vision. On the AI front, the University of California and Disney used a deep-learning approach to de-noise Monte Carlo – rendered images, which produced high-quality results suitable for production. For the film, “Finding Dory,” a unique convolution neural was trained to learn the complicated relationship between noisy and reference data across a broad set of frames with different effects, and then produce noise-free image quality.

Finally, Comcast uses machine learning models (among other solutions) to predict customers issues before they even occur. According to Adam Hertz, the VP of engineering at Comcast, their technology is 90% accurate in terms of predicting whether a technician needs to drive to a subscriber’s home in order to fix a connectivity problem. Major tech vendors like Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google are also keen on taking full advantage of  AI.

Specific Areas IA is Disrupting the Media Industry

Even without thorough scientific research activities, it’s quite easy to spot the key areas Artificial Intelligence is impacting in the media industry.

By just observing the media industry itself, it’s safe to say that AI is revolutionizing the following areas;

  • Content

Bill Gates’ phrase, “content is king,” is relevant now more than ever. Industry incumbents and new generation video services spend billions of dollars on content. While it’s true that AI is currently not able to create content on its own, intelligent AI solutions can help human directors to produce pixel-perfect videos. AI can analyze your entire footage and select the best possible shots to fit your specific needs. Things that are not possible for the human eye to detect are simple to accomplish with AI-based software. An engine that is capable of putting together the best scenes can create custom ads on the fly, more engaging movies, and many more.

  • User Experience

Positive user experiences quickly win over customers, increasing the chances of future business. Weak interactions, meanwhile, can cost you even your most loyal customers. To solve user experience challenges, most companies use targeted content, which works really well. However, targeting alone is not enough. It is also important to recommend additional resources. For instance, after watching a movie, you should consider recommending a similar film. AI is currently being used to display tailored banners based on the consumer’s profile data, payments workflows specific to their habits and preferences, and so forth.

  • Video Workflows  

Here, we can start by mentioning technologies such as tagging and window indexing. These two technologies used to be painfully slow and labor consuming processes. Recent computer vision development progress can save you a lot of money with automated metadata extraction while making your insights about footage deep and suitable for various niches like never before. Additionally, AI aids in ensuring the best possible image quality while optimizing network usage and utilizing intelligent fault diagnostics during video delivery instead of manual alerts configuration. This makes your content accessible to hearing-impaired audiences using subtitling, captioning, and so on.

It’s Not as Expensive as You Might Think

There is one other factor that you may consider a hindrance, i.e., the cost of AI implementation. The vast majority of people fear that the costs will be prohibitive.

This isn’t true at all. Depending on your goals, available basis, interaction with third-party tools, and the complexity of specific workflows, etc., the costs of your AI project could theoretically skyrocket, but in reality, purpose built-AI is inexpensive. The market is full of useful tools, frameworks, libraries, and datasets that you can leverage. For example, open source frameworks such as Tensorflow, Keras, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, MXNet, Torch, and Chainer are available for businesses looking to implement Artificial Intelligence.

In the End, It Comes Down to You

How badly do you want AI? Once you fully understand the benefits of the technology, the answer should be a resounding yes. So, begin by understanding how AI works, how it improves processes, and what it can do for you. Once you understand the benefits, you will realize that you simply can’t move forward without using AI.