How is Artificial Intelligence transforming the industry?
“It’s an interesting time: the barrier to entry is lower, but audience expectations are higher. There’s still a massive amount of content being released, but it’s up to the audience to decide what they want to watch,” said Laura Jenner from ITV, the UK’s largest broadcaster, in the brand eins Opening Talk at #MTHCON2023. Together with Mark Harrison from DPP, she introduced the first panel of the day on the transformation of the industry, moderated by Holger Volland from Brand Eins.
As Germany’s leading conference for media technologies, #MTHCON23 attracted over 500 national and international professionals in the last week of September. The audience disappeared into the cinemas of Rotor Film and fx.Center while there were still late summer temperatures outside on the studio lot. A total of 25 hours of programme at the interface of technology and creativity awaited. “The megatrends of 2023 for our industry are very clear: AI, data and access to data. Above all, we need to put the focus on the audience and come up with new additional models to monetise increasingly expensive content,” Peter Effenberg, head of the MediaTech Hub Conference, said.
The following two days of MTHCON therefore revolved around such questions as how do target groups use the different technologies and what about the competition between streaming platforms and broadcasters? Will the work of creatives – from screenwriters through set designers, actors, directors to film scores – be replaced in the future by artificial intelligence? How will content find its audience in the future? How can content be monetised?
Potential for creative work in the future
One man who was born into world of filmmaking had his say via a live broadcast from Los Angeles: “I love technology – filmmaking is a technological art form,” Roman Coppola said. As a director, writer and producer, he runs the indie production company American Zoetrope and founded the blockchain-based film community Decentralized Pictures. He is more than familiar with Babelsberg through his regular collaborations with Wes Anderson, including on The Grand Budapest Hotel. In conversation with host Kate Bulkley, Coppola enthused about the creative part of his work, but then also came to talk about the technical dimensions. He sees AI in a positive light, likes to play with it and even considers it to be a research assistant.
Evan Halleck, who worked as a VFX artist on the Oscar-winning film “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, and Rick Grandy, Principal Solutions Architect at the leading AI computing company NVDIA, also discussed how AI will turn the industry upside down. Both see the goal as using AI tools to simplify, but not replace, artistic work. “It’s not realistic for AI to take on all of the film editing. A professional editor will always know better which edit is the best one for the story,” Halleck said. And Roman Coppola also continues to rely on the human factor: “I don’t think it’s really possible for a machine to present human experiences and insights in an original story.”
Those who wanted to test AI and other transformative techniques for themselves during the conference days could do so in various workshop sessions on the second day of the conference. Equipped with a laptop and tablet, the audience sat with Jacques Alomo, CEO of creamlabs AI, to immerse themselves in AI-generated images and text using the creamAI tool. Sven Bliedung von der Heide, CEO of Volucap, showed the participants how digitally scanned actors are already being integrated into videos.
The MediaTech Hub Innovator in cooperation with the Smart System Hub provided an insight into the potential of the Internet of Things for content and creatives. “What does the Future Think?” was the title of the workshop. Madlen Mollinger, Marina Chkolnikov and Olympia Tsakiridou used future thinking and agile methods to find new ideas for the further development of the media industry together with the participants. The workshop “Monetize your Assets with Cybersecurity” on media business models with cybersecurity, led by Waldemar Berchthold, Fraunhofer Institute, and presented by the MTH Innovator together with ATHENE – Digital Hub Cybersecurity, conveyed everything about security-based business models and how cybersecurity can increase sales.
The innovative North
A delegation from Norway brought a special international perspective to the conference programme. Norway was the first guest country to be invited to attend MTHCON. The secret tech star from the North – according to the programme announcement – is considered with its film and television industry as being one of the most innovative and agile worldwide.
Four start-ups from Media City Bergen presented themselves, all of which work at the intersection of content, IT and journalism. Among them was hardware manufacturer Muybridge, which announced a world first: a newly designed camera system that removes the spatial limitations of filming by arranging camera lenses on a linear strip. With the statement “We don’t rely on third-party distribution – it’s the only way to maintain our independence”, Inge Thorud from broadcaster NRK gave the audience an insight into how the public broadcaster has become a trailblazer when it comes to streaming platforms.
A future for journalism
The film industry isn’t the only sector facing even more changes than in previous years: journalism will also be going through more profound changes in the next 10 years than it has in the last 100 years, according to Richard Gutjahr, a digital pioneer and journalist, who was joined by the technology journalist Eva Wolfsangel on the panel on “Does journalism have a future?” – presented by Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg (MIZ).
Journalism is currently struggling with disinformation, loss of importance and a problem of dwindling trust, but AI is definitely creating opportunities. In the future, small editorial teams will be able to process large amounts of content more efficiently, according to Sascha Devine, Studio 47, in a panel discussion. Richard Gutjahr predicts that it will also be groundbreaking to individualise products for the masses and t adapt news specifically for a person and the context in which they are consuming it. “The only opportunity to stand up to Big Data companies is to build up an audience who trusts us,” Eva Wolfsangel said in a summing up summarised in the light of fake news and disinformation.
The streaming market and the monetisation of content
There are the streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon or Apple TV on the one hand; and then there are the major TV channels and the production companies in between: they are all currently looking for new ways of monetisation – beyond the usual subscription models or advertising. Sessions such as “Decoding Audience Behaviour” or “Aggregate, Recommend, Personalise” saw speakers from Paramount, Samsung TV Plus and Sky talking about how audience preferences and behaviour can be predicted, how content can be produced for specific target groups and which revenue strategies now seem sensible.
Hans Hoffmann, EBU, stressed the use of metadata: “It’s all about metadata. But only 53 per cent of broadcasters have a strategy for it.” Sabine Anger of Paramount in turn reported, “You would assume that we have it all automated, but that’s not the case. We have human programming teams that curate recommendations as if they came from their best friends.” Speaking about the business model between exclusive content and licensing deals, she made it clear that it’s not all black and white and one needs to have a mix of formats. Advertising models always have to ensure that they offer the most attractive environment, and good content is ultimately what is regarded as being attractive.
Irmela Wrogemann from jay also presented new sources of income. With the automated tech solution for metadata in films, viewers can obtain information about the cast, locations or costumes and even store “in-stream”.
Live concert, guided tour of the studio lot and the Global MediaTech Pitch Day
“AI? We always need the human factor as well” – this was how Sten-Kristian Saluveer, MediaTech visionary and Head of Cannes NEXT, wrapped up what was said at MTHCON. While he was summing up the two days of the conference with host Kate Bulkley on the Expert Stage of Rotor Film, 10 start-ups were pitching at the first Global MediaTech Pitch Day competing for a prize of 10,000 euros and the chance to win up to one million euros in investment. Apart from the pitch host RAW Ventures, the expert jury consisted of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, NVIDIA, CoinTelegraph Accelerator and an AI-assisted jury member. The evening’s winner: the MediaTech start-up Setmixer received the Jury Award. The jury was impressed by Set Mixer’s tool for the automatic recording of live performances, optimising the results with the aid of AI filters. The Audience Award went to Winkt, a local social network that connects tourists, locals and businesses with one another. The AI Award – selected by an AI – went to Maekersuite. They offer an AI-powered platform that uses trends to facilitate the production of video scripts.
The delegates were offered a number of fringe events to complement the busy extensive conference programme , including networking at a speakers breakfast and a guided tour of the studio lot and Studio Babelsberg’s workshops by by the head of the Art Department Michael Düwel. In direct contrast to the conference’s dominant digital focus, the lavish sets are made there by hand – with the exception of 3D printers. The evening of the first day saw the 500 delegates being treated to a cultural highlight with an exclusive concert given by the Babelsberg Film Orchestra and hosted by the rbb journalist Knut Elstermann.
And the dates for the MediaTech Hub Conference 2024 have already been set: a carefully curated programme about future issues, media, creativity and technologies will await delegates again at the venue in Babelsberg on 25 and 26 September, 2024.
More about the MTH Blog
The media technologies of the future are already being used today – not only in the entertainment sector but in a wide variety of industries. For our MediaTech Hub Potsdam blog, we talk to tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and researchers once a month and tell the stories behind their innovative business models, ideas, projects and collaborations.
