A still from the film Morgan (2016)
In 2018, AI upended the entertainment sector with breakthroughs across gaming, films, music and arts. With machines and algorithms constantly evolving, AI is growing stronger in taking up tasks that are far too complex.
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In this article, we round up the top breakthroughs AI made in the entertainment sector.
AI makes gaming more intelligent
The gaming industry was one among the first in media and entertainment to adopt AI. Unlike other industries, the impact of technology can be clearly visualised and experienced in the gaming industry. If we look at some of the popular games that came out in the past few decades such as Call of Duty, Super Mario Galaxy,Fallout 4,The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild etc,we can see the impact of technological advancement in terms of visual effects or the gaming experience itself.
Application: One common application of AI in gaming is in controlling the actions of non-player characters.
Most of the games have NPCs that serve in advancing the storyline in a particular direction and can have a profound impact on the player’s experience. AI is often employed in the behaviour of such non-player characters in a game. The unpredictable behaviour of a NPC can improve a gamers experience with the storyline.
AI edited the first movie trailer
AI is being used to enhance digital effects, to reduce critical time and cost during the pre-production process, in the film industry. For example, natural language processing is used to break down a script for storyboarding, or data is used to model an optimised schedule for filming.
Application: Movies have evolved from presenting raw real world contents to completely virtual and amusing contents. AI-powered tools can help these virtual or digitally enhanced content to blend in with the real world content in movies. Apart from these AI has also proved to be capable of making creative content, with IBM Watson the supercomputer creating the first ever movie trailer made by AI for the 2016 movie Morgan.
AI generated music reshaped the industry
AI and music have been a popular subject for a long time, the evolution of AI tools within the music industry has been helping in the production of music, from composition to digital processing.
The computer accompaniment technology is capable of listening to and following a human performer so that it can perform synchronously. The interactive composition technology makes a machine capable of composing music in response to the performance of a live musician. There are several other applications that cover not only music composition, production, and performance but also the way music is marketed and consumed.
Application: Big companies like Apple and Spotify rely on AI to understand users engagement metrics and provide the right music to the right people and at the right time.
VR & AR make more headway
With the penetration of AI in almost all forms of media, the way of visualising the media has also been affected. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are examples or impacts of Artificial Intelligence innovating the experience of media. While Virtual Reality can give us immersive experience by taking us to a virtual world, Augmented reality can present us with virtual elements in the real world. The success of Pokemon Go can be taken as the best example of AI changing the media experiences.
Virtual Reality headsets are already popular and there are apps available that can create augmented reality with ease.
Application: Intel the biggest provider of processing power has also entered the virtual reality market providing visual contents. With the application of AI, the Intel True VR technology is capable of presenting every pixel of a scene in three dimensions.
Conclusion
The potential of AI in the media industry is huge. Various organizations across the media and entertainment industry have already adopted AI to help them in various tasks from creating content to presenting them. With the technology constantly improving, one can be sure that AI can become an inevitable force that could transform the showbiz and take it to the next level.
