IBC2023-Ends on a high note- Day Four Highlights

Media leaders and technology pioneers from around the world gathered across bustling exhibition halls, buzzing networking events and packed theatres to define and action the future of media and entertainment.

“We’ve seen a fantastic turnout from the entire industry at IBC2023,” said Michael Crimp, IBC Chief Executive Officer.

“The quality of visitors has been outstanding. There’s been a real sense of purpose at the show as media leaders and tech pioneers come together to help our industry navigate change and build a better future. Thank you for your ongoing support and participation – we’ll see you again next year.”

A not-so Brave New World?
It was almost impossible to cross the IBC2023 halls this year without overhearing conversations about AI and where it might be leading the broadcasting ecosystem. So it’s no surprise that the Content Everywhere panel discussion, ‘The opportunities and limitations for AI’, was overflowing with ears keen to hear what conundrums AI will bring.

Moderated by Colin Dixon, Founder and Chief Analyst, nScreenMedia, the panel invited Phani Kolaraja, CEO, CuVo, Radu Orghidan, Principal Data Scientist, Endava and Stuart Huke, Head of Product 24iQ – 24i to share their take on the pros and cons of a data driven future for broadcasting.

Radu Orghidan, Principal Data Scientist at Endava, discussed the opportunities AI presents for interactive experiences during a panel discussion. He highlighted how AI can be used to create interactive experiences by integrating games, live interactivity, VR, AR, and social interaction, allowing users to choose their own adventure.

Orghidan categorized AI into two types: Conventional and Generative, and explained how AI can benefit various stages of the broadcast ecosystem, from content creation to engagement. He emphasized the potential for personalized content and targeted advertising as strengths of AI development but also acknowledged privacy concerns and technological limitations as challenges.

When asked about avoiding content bubbles and echo chambers, Orghidan stressed the importance of critical thinking by users and transparency in AI models to address biases. Kolaraja emphasized the ethical usage of AI, particularly regarding privacy and trust.

Huke discussed the power of personalization and the need for consistent metadata in the industry. He mentioned that generative AI could play a role in enriching and creating new metadata.

The panel also touched on the impact of AI on user interfaces, allowing users to interact and learn with technology. They highlighted the potential for hyper-personalization without compromising privacy and trust, as well as the opportunity for developers to focus more on creativity as AI advances.

Orghidan mentioned the benefits of AI in understanding customer behavior, especially for live streaming. Kolaraja discussed the IBC Accelerator project involving predictive tagging of metadata to filter content for different audiences.

The challenge of maintaining trust in AI, especially in real-time situations like news broadcasts, was brought up. Orghidan and others emphasized the importance of human oversight in AI content creation and decision-making.

The panel acknowledged that AI technology should be carefully controlled to ensure user trust and safety. Huke mentioned scalability concerns, and Kolaraja highlighted the need for affordable real-time processing and computing.

Orghidan summarized his concerns with AI, including acceptance without critical thinking, model drift, and potential manipulation of AI models. Huke added latency as a limitation, and Kolaraja discussed the need for more affordable technology for education.

All panellists covered slightly different areas of where AI is impacting the industry, other areas discussed included user interfaces where people are being able to play and learn with the tech themselves.

Another opportune area brought up by Phani was that of hyper personalisation, without compromising on privacy and trust. Huke reflected on the pace of development of AI could allow the data community to focus less on R&D, therefore “freeing up a lot more time for developers to be creative… I think that in itself is a big positive in terms of industry… as a whole, in terms of the pace of development over time.”

On the topic of generating data and enhancing metadata, Orghidan talked of the benefits of understanding customers that are, for example, viewing a certain live stream, “So these technologies that are able to enhance our capabilities and make the analytics easier, I think are really interesting.”

Kolaraja brought up the IBC Accelerator project that CuVo are Participants of: Responsive Narrative Factory: “Tagging metadata and using it for predictive analysis or predictive viewing. Let’s say if you as a viewer, do not want to watch anything, you know, that would be disturbing for you, you can go into the actual video and use those predictive tagging to say filter out elements that you will not want to watch,” therefore making the content clean for a range of audiences.

Trust is a fine line
However this idea brought up another challenge: trust and AI, for example with news organisations, how do we filter content that may be disturbing?

“You know, masking things live is going to be difficult right? The majority of what we can do… so far, the technology has only evolved to be able to use historical elements to be able to predict what happens right?” Kolaraja contemplated, “But if there is a live event that is happening, the challenge is: How do we take decisions live based on what has happened in the past? For that to happen in real time, we need to be able to trust in the folks that are actually preparing the feed… but it is a difficult one to solve something I don’t have a solution for it, but maybe that’s what we should be looking at and see. That’s the opportunity.”

Orghidan added: “Two things: that this technology is really interesting, it is one of the only technologies that are able to take decisions and to create content. So these two abilities can be or have to be mitigated because if you let the AI take decisions on what to show or not, then you can arrive into some kind of bias that’s embedded into the AI on one hand, and if you let the AI create things, also unsupervised, that’s also dangerous. So, I mean, these two things have to be taken into account and mitigating is always having a human in the loop. That would be my advice.”

Dangerous Horizons?
Clearly no platform is going to let AI run wild on their system, upsetting users is not the goal. Human control of AI content is still key for safe and quality content.

As Huke noted: “That’s one of the big ones in terms of, I think users – they’ve got to trust the outcome. And I think that’s where there’s still some question marks over scalability and some of this technology in terms of its application. I think that’s where a lot of solutions get to be sort of finalised… the concept of it in its inception. Inception is a good one. But actually, is it scalable? Is it something that can be translated into a usable format and something again, that the users are going to accept and trust and that goes back down?”

Forward Thinking
Refusing to yield to a “dystopian view on technology,” Orghidan summarised his concerns with AI: Acceptance – or rather not accepting too much and rejecting our own critical thinking; Drift – ML models that used to work well but have inevitably outdated, when “the output stops reflecting the reality”; and manipulation – anthropomorphising the models which can lead to human manipulation.

Other limitations, suggested by Huke included latency, bots taking time to calculate answers in a world where users are used to instant results. Kolaraja then considered that “processing and computing is still pretty pricey – I’ve seen it in use cases. Technology still needs to evolve in this space where it becomes affordable to be able to process to, the closest to real time right at scale,” adding that less more accessible technology which could be utilised for education: “ In spaces like this where we were able to make this be available for masses at a cheaper rate that schools can afford …hopefully we’ll get there.”

Dixon concluded with the takeaway: “We’ve only just begun in seeing how AI is impacting us.”

IBC2023: AI and the ‘intelligence revolution’
AI has the potential to solve some of our most pressing challenges and represents the third major advance in human society – an intelligence revolution.

That is the upbeat verdict of Dex Hunter-Torricke, Head of Global Communications & Marketing, Google DeepMind, speaking as part of the IBC2023 Changemaker Programme yesterday. In his session ‘Delving Deeper: Will AI help us solve humanity’s biggest challenges?’ he predicted that the rollout of AI would unleash a new wave of human creativity.

Dex Hunter-Torricke, Head of Global Communications & Marketing at Google DeepMind, emphasized that AI is leading to significant technical advancements beyond chatbots. He mentioned examples like DeepMind’s Flamingo, which can search short-form video and generate relevant metadata automatically, and AlphaFold, which has predicted the structure of 200 million proteins, accelerating medical research.

Hunter-Torricke also highlighted the potential of AI in addressing the climate crisis, particularly in the development of fusion power. AI’s involvement in this field could lead to the availability of clean and unlimited energy, which could help solve numerous global problems.

While acknowledging the transformative potential of AI, Hunter-Torricke also acknowledged the challenges it presents. He mentioned near-term potential harms, such as misuse by bad actors ranging from individuals to nation-states. He stressed the need for a deeper conversation about the role and ethical use of AI in various industries.

Hunter-Torricke emphasized that AI has a broader impact than just chatbots and can play a transformative role in various sectors, but it also requires careful consideration of its implications and responsible usage.

Innovation and Social Impact award winners announced
IBC2023 has announced the winners of its prestigious Innovation and Social Impact Awards, which celebrate ground-breaking initiatives that are transforming the media industry landscape.

IBC2023 has announced the winners of its prestigious Innovation and Social Impact Awards, which celebrate ground-breaking initiatives that are transforming the media industry landscape.

The Innovation Awards were awarded across three categories.

The IBC Innovation Awards were announced at an early evening event in the IBC2023 Premium Lounge, while the IBC Social Impact Awards, which recognise projects that address critical industry diversity, inclusivity and environmental challenges, took place earlier in The Forum as part of the Changemakers Programme.

“I want to congratulate this year’s winners and everyone else involved with the 2023 Innovation and Social Impact Awards,” said Michael Crimp, Chief Executive Officer of IBC.

“The winning entries epitomise today’s IBC, which looks to inspire, foster, and recognise the transformative innovation and critical change we are witnessing across the media and entertainment industry. They represent the pioneering and collaborative spirit at the heart of IBC, bringing imagination and vision to the work they are doing and sharing it with the wider M&E community.”

With a new look, this year’s IBC Awards were more closely aligned with the content programme running through the show. The Innovation Awards celebrated the transformative technology that is driving much of the industry forward in a new software- and services-led direction. This year’s Social Impact Awards were part of the Changemaker Programme, with its theme of People and Purpose, focusing on diversity, sustainability, and the positive use of technology.

The winners in the three categories of the IBC2023 Innovation Awards were:

Content Creation: The BBC and partners for the world’s largest pop-up 5G standalone non-public network for live broadcast contributions using shared spectrum, deployed for the Coronation of HM King Charles III

Content Distribution: Sky Group for its cloud-native software playout platform for the origination of linear content TV channels across European territories

Content Everywhere: KAN, which changed the way Israel watched World Cup Qatar 2022 and Eurovision 2023 with Sport BUFF real-time interactive engagement.

Innovation Awards Content Everywhere winners – Lior Ovadia, Benn Achilleas, KAN

The winners in the three categories of the IBC2023 Social Impact Awards were:

Social Impact Award: RTVE, which used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide local election news coverage of nearly 5,000 small Spanish municipalities.

Diversity and Inclusion: SWI swissinfo.ch, which introduced a data-driven process to evaluate the use of inclusive language in its multi-lingual digital newsroom.

Environment and Sustainability: Iron Mountain Data Centers, which are on the path to using 100% locally sourced clean electricity 100% of the time to make their operations carbon free.

Social Impact Award winner – David Corral Hernandez, Head of Innovation, RTVE

Across both award events, IBC presented a series of previously announced Special Awards celebrating the very best in innovation and change in media and entertainment.

At the Innovation Awards, the IBC International Honour for Excellence (IHFE) – announced in August – was formally presented to Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group on the 100th anniversary of its founding by Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack L. Warner.

Also at that event, the 2023 Special Award for Innovation, another award announced ahead of the show, was presented to the German DVB-I Pilot – an initiative bringing together multiple stakeholders from the German media industry, including broadcasters, device manufacturers, software providers and research institutions.

The Best Technical Paper Award, another pre-announced honour presented at the Innovation Awards, was given to Mark Waddell, Ian Wagdin, David Butler (BBC), Sam Yoffe, Kenny Barlee, Douglas Allan, Malcolm Brew, and Robert Stewart (University of Strathclyde and Neutral Wireless) for their work on a 5G standalone non-public network at the Coronation of King Charles III.

As part of its Social Impact Awards programme, IBC presented a previously announced Special Award to Women in Streaming Media for its Mentorship Program, which focuses on career development and personal growth goals that support business objectives.

New for 2023 is the IBC Changemaker Award – also previously announced – which went to the Eurovision Song Contest for its contribution to society and culture. At the Social Impact Awards presentation event, IBC welcomed Martin Österdahl, European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest, to the stage to accept the award.

IBC2024, will take place 13-16 September 2024.
BCS Bureau