TL;DR
- Learn about the five key trends Lori H. Schwartz identified at this year’s CES in Las Vegas: health intelligence, autonomous intelligence, immersive intelligence, as-a-service intelligence and creative intelligence.
- Schwartz is joined by Boaz Ashkenazy of Simply Augmented, who provides perspective on the way artificial intelligence advancements underlie all of the trends that are expected to shape M&E this year.
What does 2024 have in store for us? Lori H. Schwartz, StoryTech principal and NAB Amplify content partner, has some thoughts.
Here, Schwartz teams up with Simply Augmented CEO and founder Boaz Ashkenazy to share five trends she identified at CES 2024 and their implications for M&E.
Watch Schwartz and Ashkenazy’s full conversation, below in two parts, and read on to get their take on how technology will change the way we work and play.
You can download Lori’s full presentation deck here.
Dig into more analysis from Lori here.
The first trend may seem obvious, but it’s extremely significant, according to Schwartz: “There was really a horizontal wave of AI, across all the exhibitors and all the experiences” at CES. She considers it to be a super-trend because it undergirds each of the themes.
“We’re really talking about the impact of artificial intelligence on all of these things,” Schwartz explains.
Health Intelligence
“This really has to do with the impact that digital has had on healthcare in this last year,” Schwartz says.
For his part, Ashkenazy says, “There’s two parts of health that are super interesting to me: One is with input coming into the system, and one with input being generated from the system.”
“Using natural language to” control both the inputs and create the outputs “is the big breakthrough,” Ashkenazy predicts. Currently, “there’s a lot of manual effort to bring content into the system” but in the near future, “that’s going to be taken care of by the machine.”
How will this impact M&E? These new products and solutions “will need storytelling surrounding them so that people will actually use them and know what to do with them,” Schwartz explains. For example, she says, “What we’re starting to see is the rise of content studios inside of healthcare systems.”
Autonomous Intelligence
“We’ve all, of course, been hearing so much about autonomous vehicles, about robots, about all these… machines taking over,” Schwartz says. “But the truth is that a lot of this is going to be about automating repetitive and tedious tasks.”
Helper robots aren’t exactly new, but Ashkenazy notes that there’s a trend toward on-device AI for these machines, eliminating the cloud connection. He explains this enables the robots to have faster reactivity to external stimuli, whether using computer vision (integrated cameras) or other interactive elements.
“The more that we personalize and create these solutions that ease tasks, the more there’ll be opportunities to free up for higher level spending of time,” Schwartz observes.
Immersive Intelligence
Sphere in Las Vegas is perhaps the most famous example of this as of 2024. Once you see it, Schwartz says, “You realize that the future of display has changed forever.”
Avatars also fall into the category of immersive intelligence. “Being able to actually communicate intelligently with an avatar is one of the most exciting things,” Ashkenazy says. “And I think the only way that that can happen is through natural language and AI being able to be fast enough so that you’re getting responses in real time.”
Introducing these avatars also prompts the need for real-time translation “so that anybody with any language can get into these environments and have interactions in these environments that feel real and that feel compelling,” Ashkenazy says. He adds, “That has real implications for content creators, as they think about ‘What kind of intelligence do we want to bring into these avatars?’, based on the conversations that we might be having?”
Schwartz agrees, noting “We’re really heading towards this immersive world, AI-driven but also really highly dependent on content creators.”
As-a-Service Intelligence
“Products are now going to be moving towards a product-as-a-service-model, which means that instead of just buying a product, using it, and then throwing it out, when you’re done, you’re actually going to be subscribing to services through that product manufacturer,” Schwartz explains.
For his part, Ashkenazy says, “It involves IoT devices that live in all the spaces and all the buildings that we occupy. And you’re going to be seeing product-as-a-service inside spaces as well, where you know, the monitoring of devices that understand where we are, what temperature we want to be in, what the sound quality is like for spaces. All of that is going to actually have AI on device and very, very small chips, making calculations and helping our environments react.”
This trend is “going to be a little bit invisible,” Ashkenazy predicts. He says, “I think AI is going to be in every product. And we’re not going to know it, but it’s going to be helping us in different ways.”
Schwartz agrees: “I think the data point we heard at CES was that there’ll be 200 billion devices that are going to be connected to the internet over the next few years. And that each of them are going to be able to make decisions.”
This also means “brands …are going to have to become publishers. They’re going to have to generate content,” she says. “They’re going to have to bring value to what their product is, besides the actual product, so that they can actually deliver on a service. And the service could be, you know, as simple as news.”
Creative Intelligence
The final trend, creative intelligence, is “changing the model for how content is created,” Schwartz says.
“Last year was really a year of Gen AI and text,” Ashkenazy says, “and I think this year and the year to follow is going to be the year of multimodal,” referring to images, video, and audio content creation.
“It’s something to celebrate because it’s going to allow us to have a lot more iterative ideas early. And that’s going to mean…better designs at the end,” he predicts.
“It will also launch newer businesses that will be able to really see Gen AI as a tool. And it requires talent; it still requires that human input,” Schwartz says.
“The bottom line for me when it comes to creators and these tools is that smaller teams and individuals can do so much more now than they could before. It really gives creators superpowers,” Ashkenazy says.
Want more? We’re excited to share this exclusive “5 Trends” document, meticulously curated by Schwartz’s team of professionals in advertising, technology, and media.
Dig into more trend analysis from Lori here.
