philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

THE TURBULENT PAST AND UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

History and perspective

See the full article here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/history-of-ai

AI Innovations In Media And Communications

Some of the top application areas used in this sector are: gaming, fake story detection, plagiarism detection, personalization, production planning and management, sales and marketing and talent identification.

One of the areas which is very exciting is understanding how AI is being used in news. AI is making major impacts in aggregating massive data analysis of the conversations across the world-wide web and classifying into themes to appreciate topics trending globally or even identify increasing risks of terrorism or even health risks, like a pandemic.

Companies like LeadSift in Canada are even analyzing all your searches on the world-wide web to draw relevancy to targeting the right buyer with the right interests to your products and services. This is an area called propensity to purchase signal detection.

Another company, Pesado for example analyzed over 18 million messages across 180 brands in 2019 to identify words that genuinely resonated with customers. These insights can help get closer to a buyer profile psychographic profile to increase their odds of engagement.

Continued dialogue between government, industry, citizens is needed to ensure AI is being developed for good vs harm. Fake news is one area where greater controls are needed.

Note: See The AI Dilemma for more info on the Media Industry.

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2021/09/30/ai-innovations-in-media-and-communications/?sh=236c38c3599d

HOW MILLENNIALS SHAPE THE WHOLE NEW PERSONALIZED ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

Personalized entertainment is all about recommending shows, movies, and documentaries to subscribers based on their streaming preferences and behavior.  ...

Due to the influence of the millennial target audience, various streaming services such as Hulu, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer, Disney Plus, etc. have added different enticing features to help their subscribers’ streaming needs appropriately.  

For example, Netflix offers an attractive party feature that allows a group of subscribers having similar preferences and choices content-wise watch a particular show virtually at the same time without any hassle. 

Besides, all these services have one thing in common, which is video streaming quality. That’s because users can change the video quality using different options like standard, UHD and 4K to stream media content depending on their requirements stress-free. 

Millennials favorite TV shows and movies of all time

• The Walking Dead
• Outer Banks
• Supernatural
• Stranger Things
• Friends
• All American
• Money Heist (La Casa De Papel)
• Family Guy
• Grey’s Anatomy
• 90 Day Fiancé 
• The Flash
• My So Called Life
• Boy Meets World
• Party of Five
• My Best Friend’s Wedding
• Notting Hill
• The Matrix
• Mortal Kombat
• The Mummy
• The Devil’s Advocate

See the full story here: https://filmthreat.com/features/how-millennials-shape-the-whole-new-personalized-entertainment-industry/

How Mixed and Augmented Reality Are Becoming Viable In-Venue Options

“The challenge for teams and even for companies like TFG is that the creative is as beautiful as it is time-consuming — and thus is a significant investment,” says O’Brien. “With only 10 home games, we’d ideally want the MR content to evolve each game, but development is a bit more complicated.”

Despite the creative challenges, opening up this door can only benefit the community by pushing others to adopt these workflows.

“Being able to use the technology throughout your entire show is the key to success, and as a live producer, it’s been a ton of fun figuring out ways to incorporate [MR] into our show. We want to keep pushing the limits on where this can go in the future.”

The Ravens’ O’Brien believes that MR can help sponsor-centric content gain traction and appeal. The technique could also help sponsorship messaging become more congruent with other high-quality aspects of the overall show.

See the full story here: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2021/09/29/how-mixed-and-augmented-reality-are-becoming-viable-in-venue-options/

Nreal’s new AR sunglasses are made for binge watching TV

Augmented reality company Nreal is launching a cheaper, iOS-compatible, more compact version of its smart glasses. The new Nreal Air glasses are supposed to ship starting in December 2021 across Japan, China, and South Korea.

Based on Nreal’s description, the new Nreal Air glasses have some core similarities with the Nreal Light glasses from 2020. Both are designed to look like relatively normal sunglasses and pitched as ideal for projecting a virtual big-screen display in front of your eyes. They’re both using micro OLED displays for their augmented reality optics and are powered by a phone via a tether cable. And they’re both aimed at consumers rather than businesses, researchers, or the military.

Nreal Air glasses, by contrast, don’t have any outward-facing cameras. They can display video and phone apps, but they can’t see what’s around you, which means they don’t have the spatial awareness and hand tracking options the Nreal Light does.

The new glasses let users tilt the lenses at three angles, making it potentially easier for more people to get a clearer image.

As with the Light, it’s going to be selling the glasses in partnership with major phone carriers; it hasn’t named specific partners, but it’s previously worked with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, Korea’s LG Uplus, and Japan’s KDDI.

See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/30/22700782/nreal-air-smart-ar-glasses-release-date-shipping-countries

Open AI Chairman and CTO Greg Brockman to Keynote the NYC Media Lab Summit 2021: Future Imperfect

Greg Brockman, Chairman and CTO of Open AI, the world’s leading AI research lab, will keynote the NYC Media Lab Summit 2021, “Future Imperfect,” taking place virtually October 6th and 7th.

In the five short years of its existence, OpenAI has become one of the leading AI research labs in the world. 

"OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity,” says the company in its mission statement.

Greg Brockman, who dropped out of both Harvard and MIT, began his career as one of the early employees and CTO of the payments company Stripe. OpenAI was founded by Elon Musk. Today the non-profit artificial intelligence research company 120-person shop is at the forefront of innovation in AI.

“Summit 2021: Future Imperfect,” will include panels on the benefit of diverse teams; the role of storytelling, spatial computing and machine-generated content in media; green tech; the future of the space industry and more.

See the full story here: https://www.prweb.com/releases/open_ai_chairman_and_cto_greg_brockman_to_keynote_the_nyc_media_lab_summit_2021_future_imperfect/prweb18229296.htm

Register for the conference and find more info here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nyc-media-lab-summit-2021-future-imperfect-tickets-166529922481

On the horns of a dilemma: Inventorship of AI-generated inventions

Conclusion

Recognition of AI as an inventor, being a progressive move, can certainly pose challenges, primarily to human inventors. Patent law requires that a patent should be non-obvious to a person skilled in the art, and the recognition of an AI inventor could possibly raise the bar for a person skilled in the art, making it difficult for human inventors to obtain patents.

Another aspect that warrants attention is the lack of autonomy in AI and the human contributions made in AI-generated inventions. The extent to which an AI has made an invention in an autonomous manner with minimal human input will vary on a case-to-case basis and lawmakers need to clearly define the ‘extent of contribution’ that will be substantial enough to claim inventorship and be able to identify that contribution in every case. 

The European Parliament has stated that any wrongful acts or omissions by an AI will make its human operator/manufacturer/user liable and not the AI itself. This could discourage the use of AI for inventions. Further, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held that only a human being can be legally listed on a patent as an inventor.

See the full story here: https://www.barandbench.com/view-point/the-viewpoint-on-the-horns-of-a-dilemma-inventorship-of-ai-generated-inventions

Immersive VR can disrupt children’s default coordination strategy

Wearing a VR headset and a movement sensor on their back, children are asked to play two games. In both experiments, children show control abilities similar to adults' when using their head, but have difficulty using their torso to control the games, unlike adults.

The scientists believe that head control is easier in VR environments because the desired orientation is aligned with the visual input. The torso control, on the other hand, requires the user to separate vision from the actual control, which requires complex head-torso coordination. Young children tend to rely stronger on the visual input than the internal sensation of body posture. The novelty of the VR environment appears to overwhelm the child's brain, which pays less attention to the internal signals.

See the full story here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/929582

Facebook invests $50 mln to build the ‘metaverse’ in responsible manner

The new XR Programs and Research Fund will invest the money globally over two years to ensure metaverse technologies are "built in a way that's inclusive and empowering," Facebook said.

The company said it plans to work with researchers across four areas including data privacy and safety, to allow users to get help if something they see in the metaverse makes them uncomfortable.

It will also research how to design technologies that are inclusive and accessible to all users, and also "encourage competition" in the nascent industry, Facebook added in a blog post.

Initial partners for Facebook's new metaverse fund include Howard University in Washington D.C., which will research the history of diversity in the information technology industry and how it could shape opportunity in the metaverse.

Seoul National University and the University of Hong Kong will research safety, ethics and responsible design, Facebook said.

See the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-invests-50-mln-build-metaverse-responsible-manner-2021-09-27/

TikTok Developers Erasing Faces for Augmented Reality Applications

ByteDance, the Chinese multinational internet company behind TikTok, has developed a new method for erasing faces in video so that identity distortion and other bizarre effects can be imposed on people in augmented reality applications. The company claims that the technique has already been integrated into commercial mobile products, though it does not state which products.

Once faces in video have been ‘zeroed’, there’s enough ‘face canvas’ to produce eye-boggling distortions, as well as potentially superimposing other identities. Examples supplied in a new paper from ByteDance researchers illustrate the possibilities, including restoring the ‘erased’ features in various comical (and certainly some grotesque) configurations:

See the full story, with details of the process, here: https://www.unite.ai/tiktok-developers-erasing-faces-for-augmented-reality-applications/