How Emerging Technology Impacts Entertainment and Media Industry?
Entertainment is an industry as old as time itself. For years, people have danced and acted and sang on stages to catch others’ attention so that together they may forget the hustle, bustle, and stress of everyday life.
In medieval times, fights and races were commonplace. But the generation of today is far more accustomed to a new form of entertainment. The 21st century has brought with its marvels of modern entertainment such as Netflix, movies, music, gaming, social media, TV shows, magazines, museums, carnivals, live shows, etc. This list is highly variable even within itself, and in today’s world, it is impossible to look at this industry without focusing on things like the effect of AI on entertainment, or that of technology in general.
Technology in Digital Media
Digital media itself is a gift of technological advances in recent years. But here we would like to focus on things more to do with recent innovations and the latest technology. The advent of the 2010s brought with it a new experience for movie-goers, i.e. 3D cinema experience. This marked the beginning of a wave of the Augmented Reality wave in entertainment when people stopped settling for just consuming the media, but instead insisted on being made to feel an active part in it!
Today, technology has permeated into almost every crack and crevice of the sphere that is digital entertainment. We are all aware of and consistently use it, too!
1. Movie Production – Movie production is not something the common man does, but it is a very tedious process. AI can help generate shot-lists, schedules, manage budgets, etc. It is rumored that soon, AI will be able to generate content independently!
2. Automated Subtitles – Be it our favorite show on Netflix or an unclear YouTube video we are watching, almost every leading video hosting website has an option to auto-generate subtitles. This makes the audio much easier to follow as well as making it accessible to those who are hard of hearing. There has been a lot of improvement in this field in recent years and the subtitles, thus generated are usually very accurate.
3. Video Games – Video games, part of the gaming industry, are a huge part of today’s world. With prize pools exceeding $30million, there is no lack of investment into AI in this field. AI has gotten significantly better from the past days and is most commonly used to control NPC (non-player controlled) characters, who must interact with their environment, the player and other NPCs in a multitude of different scenarios. There also exist virtual reality games in the market today, in which players are a part of the game world to a very large extent!
4. Sports Broadcast – In recent years, many of the edited sports clips we see have been done by AI! AI automatically scans through a game and selects the decisive moments and then joins them together to make the highlight reels we so love!
5. Implementing Moderation – Every country and the online platform has some rules and regulations for what content is permissible and what is disallowed. AI has been used more and more extensively to filter content and quarantine certain posts and comments. AI is also used to automatically set an age rating for videos on hosting sites so that inappropriate content isn’t available freely. It also detects offensive language, adult scenes, etc.
6. Personalized Content – Market studies have proven that consumers prefer websites and apps that can provide personalized content for them based on their pre-existing tastes. This is a challenging task for any traditional algorithm because of the near-infinite possibilities of tastes that various users can have in any given genre! However, it is a problem perfectly solved by AI and such AIs have been garnering praise from all over for their amazing recommendations!
Technology in Non-Digital Media
Understanding the impact of technology in Digital Media is simple and is almost obvious to most of us. However, we must also appreciate the advent of technological solutions in more traditional non-digital media. This includes theatre, concerts, magazines, photoshoots, live shows, radio, etc.
In such forms of entertainment, technology is again supremely useful. The latest key trends in the media & entertainment industry are all pointing towards digitization of these traditional forms as well:
1. TV: TV has undergone a rough time with online streaming platforms, but it remains largely popular across the globe. With technology by its side, TV can now boast custom ads for every household as well as tailored content for each person!
2. OOH: OOH (Out-of-home) has been gaining popularity again. In today’s world of ad-blockers and ad-skipping OOH advertising (billboards, signs, etc.) has regained popularity amongst companies looking to get their name out there. Attractive and dynamic billboards have been a thing for a while, but in recent times OOH platforms can customize ads based on the current people looking at it! This is done by using the publicly available traffic data in a given area and aggregating it to deliver the most appropriate ads.
3. Print Media: Despite its decreasing popularity, as most magazines have moved online, it is still a relevant force in many B2B and B2C markets. As such, the link from articles in the magazine to an online news source is very important to form.
4. Concerts: Music concerts/live shows have been transformed by technology. From DJ’s playing our favorite tracks to lighting that changes with the chords being played, the entire experience has been made far more immersive and entertaining for fans! Often, using the Internet of Things, the entire arena works in unison to the show!
5. Radio: By employing newer technology, costs in the radio entertainment industry have gone down steeply, thereby breathing fresh life into it. Radio has also migrated from traditional broadcast stations to podcasts and mini-radio channels on online audio platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
Conclusion
In today’s world, technology has gotten its hooks into every industry you can imagine! The entertainment industry is not slacking off either, as it must boast premier quality to its consumers or fear to lose them. In the USA alone, this industry is estimated to be worth over $720 billion (Source: Statista) by 2020! This mammoth amount of money flowing in further vitalizes investment into technological devices.
In the entertainer’s ideal world, “All my fans live in the best virtual reality – the one I’ve created for them!” And with the rise of popular media and excess entertainment, this looks like a very real possibility!