AI’s got talent: Meet the new rising star in media and entertainment
Computer generated imagery (CGI) made its film debut in 1957 with a purple spiral expanding out of an eyeball in the opening credits of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller “Vertigo.”
... NVIDIA Omniverse Audio2Face, for example, lets artists generate realistic facial expressions and emotions from a real time or recorded audio source. The beta reference application simplifies animation of a 3D character to match any voice-over track for film, games, digital assistants and more. The app can be used for interactive real-time applications or as a traditional facial animation authoring tool. ...
The Omniverse Audio2Gesture (A2G) neural network is trained to generate body motion derived entirely from an audio source. ...
HYPER-PERSONALIZATION. Analyzing data – such as box office, sweeps and readership — has long been an important focus of M&E. Content providers have become increasingly sophisticated in tracking how consumers use their platforms. Many already employ ML to suggest content based on an individual’s habits and preferences. Gaining better, more granular understanding of customers is essential to the industry’s current massive push to identify and deliver highly personalized content. More interaction provides more data for AI-enabled algorithms. That means better, on-target recommendations and playlists for content delivered to a preferred mobile device, PC, smart TV, digital media player or game console. ...
See the full, lengthy article with embedded videos here: https://venturebeat.com/ais-got-talent-meet-the-new-rising-star-in-media-and-entertainment/
James Dolan’s Sphere Launches Immersive Entertainment Production Facility In Burbank Equipped With High-Res ‘Big Sky’ Cameras
James Dolan’s Sphere Entertainment, which was spun off from MSG Entertainment in April, has opened Sphere Studios, a Burbank facility for producers of immersive projects.
The space is dedicated to developing next-generation productions designed to be shown its parent company’s Sphere venues. ...
Sphere Studios, which features a quarter-sized replica of the Vegas Sphere screen as a means of helping creative teams fine-tune their work, will showcase technology like the Big Sky ultra-high resolution camera system. ...
Big Sky, Dibble maintained, is “the most advanced camera system in the world” and was created by the company “out of innovative necessity. This was the only way we could bring to life the vision of our filmmakers, artists and collaborators for Sphere.” ...
See the full story here: https://deadline.com/2023/06/james-dolan-sphere-studios-immersive-entertainment-production-burbank-big-sky-cameras-1235409939/?fbclid=IwAR2v4kXCypfVyzwvsWuIVuFofEccPamwiXDXFydZ8NZUBR1pgY36ccPBHLw
OpenAI CEO Calls for Collaboration With China to Counter AI Risks
As the U.S. seeks to contain China’s progress in artificial intelligence through sanctions, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is choosing engagement.
Dialing in from overseas to a packed conference in Beijing on Saturday to widespread cheers in the audience, Altman emphasized the importance of collaboration between American and Chinese researchers to mitigate the risks of AI systems, against a backdrop of escalating competition between Washington and Beijing to lead in the technology.
“China has some of the best AI talent in the world,” Altman said. “So I really hope Chinese AI researchers will make great contributions here.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/openai-ceo-calls-for-collaboration-with-china-to-counter-ai-risks-eda903fe
Virtual Beings Summit: How AI simulations will change entertainment
... “The thesis this year is that single agent chatbots have reached their peak,” Saatchi said. “They’re commoditized and there are hundreds of them. And it’s just ultimately boring. ...
For the chatbots, Saatchi believed that the virtual beings created to talk with us deserved to have real lives. ...
“That’s different from just a backstory, where you write up their world in like a page of text, and then that’s who they are,” Saatchi said. “They actually need to have existed in virtual life, to exist in space and time, and they need to exist in context of a society like families. And they need to be given the respect to actually have autonomy within those worlds. Now the technology is there.” ...
Saatchi’s leaders at Fable Studio — Jessica Shamash, Frank Carey and Pete Billington — spoke at our recent GamesBeat Summit 2023 event about The Simulation, a new game they’re putting together where players train AI characters and then set them loose in a virtual world. ... And if you leave them in there long enough, they might become sapient. This is just part of a new AI movement that the Virtual Beings Summit aims to capture. ...
“The goal of the Virtual Beings Summit is to move the conversation on to ‘simulated virtual beings,’ or AIs that live rich 24/7 lives in 3D simulations, with families, coworkers, neighbors and friends – with no need for human relationships and emergent intelligence.” ...
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/games/virtual-beings-summit-features-ai-simulations-are-changing-entertainment-june-7-in-sf/
Designing the extraordinary at Walt Disney Imagineering
Over a 30-year career in theme park design, Disney’s Scott Trowbridge has been the creative force behind some of the world’s most successful and ground-breaking theme park attractions. ...
In the early 90s, Trowbridge gained a place at the University of Southern California’s prestigious School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). ...
At SCA, aside from learning “so much about what not to do”, Trowbridge says he learned the importance of storytelling. “I think it’s at the heart of who we are as humans. We experience the world through narrative examples … that’s just how we’re wired”. ...
“At Disney, we’re there to entertain our guests. We’re not there to challenge them. That ability to put yourself in the story, to become a character or a version of a character that you want to play in one of our immersive experiences is amazing. And when we have given our guests (and our cast too) the opportunity to be more of a participant in these stories and not just a spectator, they have really, really, sparked that. ...
Not only are we talking to them, but our fan base is very, very vocal and lets us know what they’re thinking about what we do all the time, every day.” ...
“We went into this knowing that nothing like this had ever been done before. But we thought we’re never going to get good at this kind of thing if we don’t start. I’m so proud to have been part of the team that brought Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser to life. We’ve learned a ton. And we’re already thinking about what we might do next”. ...
See the full article with embedded video here; https://blooloop.com/theme-park/in-depth/scott-trowbridge-disney-imagineering/?fbclid=IwAR0gXSy8_VAYQ72ocVpKkL4YC99l1H4twZDRFml4jiSLWvODAIasf6TYdkg
