Generative AI is now a foundational technology for media.
That is one of the overarching key insights from the Media Supply Festival 2023. The annual event, which took place in New York in June, brought together media companies and the technology supplier ecosystem to explore challenges, initiatives, innovations and implementations in the media industry and content supply chain.
At the close of the event, a panel of vendor CEOs from Signiant, Vubiquity and Prime Focus Technologies joined DPP CTO Rowan de Pomerai on stage to reflect on its key themes. That artificial intelligence is now a foundational technology — critical for broadcasters and vendors alike.
The CEOs shared how interest in AI and machine learning is considerable, and is driving major vendor investments in that area. Much of the real world application is currently quite functional — in network optimisation or video formatting, for example. But generative AI is seen as foundational for services such as transcription and localisation — as long as it has the necessary transparency.
Download Media Supply Festival 2023: The Key Insights summary report
Artificial intelligence and machine learning were discussion threads which weaved through many Media Supply Festival 2023 sessions.
Creative opportunity
Long been seen as a tool to automate repetitive tasks, recent advancements in generative AI have shown that machines can be more creative than many ever expected. So how will processes in post production change, and how will AI assist — or threaten — creative users?
Experts from A+E Networks, Adobe, Backlight and Light Iron discussed AI in post production, and its uses in versioning and compliance — and now by creatives in helping them deliver quality outputs, faster.
At the end of the event, delegates were asked to vote on three key insights from the session:
- Generative AI gets us faster to acceptable, so humans can spend more time getting us to exceptional
- AI helps bring efficiency to the bottom line – but also opportunity to the top line
- Visibility, flexibility and security must all be foundational principles for the application of AI
And DPP members voted overwhelmingly that augmenting the human to produce real quality is the most important opportunity provided by the technology. Much more so even than visibility and security, which perhaps reflects different attitudes to audiences in the US and Europe, when comparing Media Supply Festival attitudes with the key insights from the DPP European Broadcaster Summit which took place in Berlin in March 2023, where transparency and trust were cited as the biggest barriers to implementing AI 'solutions'.
Artificial intelligence in news operations
AI in news was discussed by the Associated Press. For the US news provider, artificial intelligence too provides an opportunity for creative innovation in the newsroom and the vendor ecosystem.
Vincent Tripodi, VP Engineering at AP, said that many journalists — often an inquisitive yet cynical crowd — have a positive view of AI, seeing it as a way to free themselves of repetitive tasks. He added that there is a buoyant AI startup scene outside the media industry which is an important source of innovation if tapped into.
But implementing AI also needs to be considered within the context of the other major themes from the Media Supply Festival 2023: organisational design, operational alignment, and of course change management. DPP members can download CEO Mark Harrison's key insights report here and learn more about all of the major insights.
