Order vs. Chaos
Just one year after OpenAI turned the world upside down with GPT-4, NAB Show brings together senior media practitioners to discuss where AI has found its place (and where it hasn’t) in media-making pipelines.
It’s important that show attendees “take away a clear understanding of what’s real right now and what’s coming in the near term, rather than what is aspirational,” explains Andy Maltz, principal at General Intelligence, who will moderate the session “Navigating the AI Revolution in Entertainment,” held Sunday, April 14 at 11:00 AM.
“While it’s understandable that there’s anxiety, I don’t think panic helps anytime, anywhere. We’re going to take a rational, dispassionate, educated, and long-term view of AI’s strength and weaknesses.”
The industry executives joining Maltz come from a wide range of media- related verticals — motion pictures, television, streaming, and sound — and will offer an objective view of the real-world impact of AI.
They include Bill Baggelaar, independent media technology consultant; Rick Hack, head of Media & Entertainment Partnerships, Intel; Melody Hildebrandt, CTO, FOX; and Scott Rose, CTO at VSI.
“I think it is fine to be concerned, if it heightens your awareness,” Maltz says of the frenzy around the topic. “Anyone who ignores what is happening does so at their own peril. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that every job in media creation and distribution will be replaced by artificial intelligence.
“After all, when the word processor was invented, it did not eliminate great novelists; it helped more of them to achieve.”
Panelists will share views on content authenticity, which Maltz says is of particular importance for news. “We need ways of validating whether an image or sound clip is real or fake and then mechanisms that demonstrate that clearly to anyone who consumes them.”
There are also issues around how data and content should be licensed for the training of AI models. Both issues can be treated separately but also, of course, overlap.
A Long View on a New Technology
Maltz has over four decades of experience instigating, developing, and deploying technologies in the media and entertainment industry.
He currently serves as chair of ISO/TC 36 Cinematography, the motion picture industry’s international technical standards body. His previous roles include the founding head of staff of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Science and Technology Council; founding board member of the Academy Software Foundation; founder and CEO of digital cinema pioneer Avica Technology; and co-initiator of the Advanced Authoring Format, an industry-standard media authoring interchange format.
He views AI through this lens and says it is another in a long line of technologies that the industry has initially feared before co-opting, standardizing and using to its benefit.
“If you go back to the beginning of motion pictures, there has been constant technology-driven disruption. What typically happens is that when innovations are introduced, there’s a wild west of experimentation and use.
AI in Context
“For example, there were many different film formats around before the industry standardized on 35mm. There were different competing systems when color came in. The same with digital sound, digital VFX, early digital cinema systems, digital workflow and so on.
“What’s different now is that the AI innovation touches just about every discipline within media, creation and distribution. AI and related technologies are everything everywhere all at once, and we are in that wild west phase now.
“But — and I’d even put money on it — we’re probably going to get to the same place we’ve always ended up — which is an agreement on technical interfaces and data formats and business practices. That is necessary in order to continue to have a thriving $40 billion global motion picture industry.”
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