AI is Rapidly Reshaping Media & Entertainment
The media and entertainment landscape is undergoing a seismic shift driven by advancements in artificial intelligence. From film studios to gaming companies, leading organizations are tapping into the transformative potential of AI to create more personalized, responsive, and dynamic experiences for consumers.
According to PwC, AI has the potential to increase global GDP by $15.7 trillion by 2030, with much of this value created in media and consumer-facing industries. It‘s no surprise then that investment and adoption of AI continue to accelerate each year.
In this blog post, we‘ll explore some of the most impactful current and emerging applications of AI across major media segments and highlight real-world examples of its positive impact.
Personalized Experiences: The New Normal
Personalization has become table stakes in every digital industry today. Consumers have come to expect services tailored to their individual preferences, whether it‘s a unique Netflix homepage just for them or Spotify playlists aligned with their musical taste.
Powerful machine learning recommender systems now drive much of this personalization by analyzing vast datasets on usage patterns, content attributes, and user traits. As models infer more nuanced insights about each customer, companies can respond in real-time to serve up precisely what that person wants.
Beyond accurate recommendations though, these AI systems also provide predictive forecasts on the types of content or products likely to resonate best with different customer segments. This helps companies optimize production pipelines and marketing strategies. For example, major studios like Disney leverage historical data to decide which new movies, ride park attractions, consumer products and so on to invest in.
Computer Vision Unlocks Immersive Realism
Visual media has also undergone a renaissance thanks to AI, especially computer vision techniques like generative adversarial networks (GANs). Films and video games strive toward heightened realism by using machine learning algorithms to synthesize incredibly convincing imagery and animations.
In gaming, AI can automatically generate vast open worlds full of realistic buildings, terrain, flora/fauna and people. Beyond assets, it also empowers more lifelike non-player character behavior driven partially by machine learning models.
Hollywood too now utilizes AI in post-production visual effects, making it faster and cheaper to create photoreal CGI backdrops, animals, crowds of people, and even digital humans like those seen in The Last of Us or Avengers: Endgame. This virtual production approach saw a breakthrough with 2019‘s The Lion King remake, where no physical set or real animals existed during filming.
Cutting-Edge Creativity Tools
While AI will likely never fully replace human creativity, it can certainly augment and enhance creative workflows. We already have tools that auto-generate lyrics, compose original music, design game levels, and even write screenplays or news articles.
In the short term, creatives are leveraging these "generative AI" tools for inspiration, rapid prototyping ideas, mass producing assets and more. While output quality remains uneven, continued progress could make AI indispensable across many production tasks.
Indeed major tech players like Google, Meta and Baidu are investing heavily in large language models—like PaLM, Galactica and Wenxin—to power the next generation of generative AI. As these models grow ever more capable thanks to advances in deep learning, they‘ll provide creators smarter "co-pilots" to collaborate with.
We see glimpses of this future with tools like Anthropic‘s Claude, which can not only write but also intelligently discuss and iterate on ideas.
Automating the Boring Stuff
Less glamorously but just as importantly, artificial intelligence also offloads myriad tedious manual processes that plague media workflows. Whether it‘s reviewing user-generated content, moderating discussions, QA testing games or translating subtitles, such tasks demand substantial human capital.
Now companies deploy machine learning pipelines to partially or fully automate these jobs to reduce costs and free up talent for higher value work. For instance, YouTube relies extensively on AI moderation while TikTok and Twitch leverage computer vision algorithms to catch policy violations.
Natural language processing similarly powers intelligent chatbot agents that offer 24/7 customer support on demand. Users get quick resolutions without wait times, while the company minimizes staffing overhead. We see such virtual assistants handling client inquiries at Spotify, EA and Windows Xbox support.
The Future of Media is AI
Across all corners of the media and entertainment industry, AI is transforming legacy processes and unlocking completely novel experiences. Personalization and realism continue reaching impressive new heights each year as related technologies grow more advanced.
Perhaps most exciting though is the expanding creative canvas offered by generative AI tools, which provide creators exponential leverage. As models like PaLM and Wenxin evolve to match (or exceed) human capabilities in many domains, they promise to collapse the barriers between imagination and realization.