It’s only a decade since Hollywood was making movies about AI, as blockbusters such as Ex Machina and Her explored its possibilities through the sci-fi lens. Today, in a striking role reversal, this revolutionary technology is pivotal in the creation, production and distribution of the latest box office hits.
Generative AI (gen AI) has become mainstream across the media and entertainment landscape, with a projected global value of $1.9 billion by the end of the year and $16.8 billion by 2023. Advertising, gaming, music, news, film and streaming organisations are partnering with tech firms to unleash the technology’s potential and there’s a huge focus on hyper-personalisation to enhance the audience experience.
By automating and streamlining creative processes, gen AI unlocks new revenue opportunities, reduces costs and drives business value. In the first of a two-part blog series on how gen AI is transforming communications, media and technology, we take a closer look at some of the key use cases for gen AI within the highly competitive entertainment industry.
Turning ideas into reality at speed
Anyone who uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 will understand how large language models (LLMs) can generate scripts and news articles, but gen AI’s content creating applications extend much further. The technology can create entire commercials, complete with images, text, music and commentary, from a company URL. The UK AI video creator Waymark is at the forefront of this approach and its customers have reported a remarkable decrease of up to 94% in the time taken to produce a video.
In gaming, HFT Market Intelligence predicts that the gen AI market will surge by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.7% over the next six years. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) will become more immersive, interactive and personalised, with hyper-realistic non-player characters (NPCs) battling gamers in dynamic environments. Gen AI-driven procedural content generation is a key evolution in game design, as algorithms create complex, ever changing landscapes, levels and quests. Offering highly engaging game worlds for players, this technique also cuts costs and accelerates time to market.
Sports broadcasters are turning to multimodal gen AI to serve up real-time insights during live broadcasts and create in-game highlights clips. Multimodal learning models add an extra layer to the technology by feeding through deep analysis of images, sound and speech to LLMs for instant content creation to drive viewer engagement.
De-aging and dubbing: optimising operational workflows
Gen AI is also transforming operational workflows in the entertainment industry, streamlining processes and automating routine tasks to increase efficiency. Powerful editing software enables creatives to modify and enhance content in post-production; a compelling example is the ability to de-age actors convincingly. In the upcoming movie Here we’ll see 67-year-old Tom Hanks play a character in his 20s and 30s, through the wizardry of gen AI models which analysed vast datasets of archive footage to successfully capture how a much younger Hanks would look and move.
Automated localisation, where content is adapted for specific regions, is unlocking new global revenue streams. Hulu’s crime series Vanda is said to be the first ever AI-dubbed drama and Deepdub, the specialists who seamlessly turned the original Portuguese into English, claim a 70% faster turnaround time and 50% savings on conventional dubbing.
Gen AI is also revolutionising content distribution as its algorithms analyse vast amounts of user data to enable dynamic hyper-personalisation. Streaming platforms like Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime are delivering more highly tailored content than ever, rapidly, for optimum audience satisfaction and loyalty.
A responsible revolution
The endless possibilities of gen AI are driving creativity, efficiency, revenue growth and cost savings in the media and entertainment industry. However, ethical questions about content integrity, accuracy and authenticity remain. Are AI-generated commercials trustworthy? Can audiences believe in what they see on screen and are artists being undermined by technology which can replicate them so convincingly as avatars? It’s imperative that the technology is harnessed with robust governance to ensure safety, accuracy, data privacy and security.
Cognizant supports organisations to adopt scaled gen AI applications to boost performance, productivity, growth and faster time to market. We have deep knowledge of open-source language models that can be deployed for specific use cases and we are dedicated to maintaining the highest standards for responsible and ethical AI.
Look out for our next blog, on how gen AI is transforming education.
To find out more about how we can support your journey to becoming a gen-AI native organisation get in touch.
