Artificial intelligence and broadcast, the current reality

Artificial intelligence and machine learning were one of the many hot topics thrown around at this year's NAB Show, with companies hinting at its future potential to enhance workflows and create new efficiencies for broadcasters. For most, however, it was closer to a buzzword to show the potential future impact with limited real-world applications as of yet. Efficiency is always a very important topic. How do you help me do this better and cheaper?" said David Cohen of Grass Valley. Some of the true implementations of machine learning and A.I. on display at the show for broadcasters included technology like IBM's Watson through Max Engage or the newly announced Avid AI platform. With Watson in The Weather Company's Max Engage, weather forecasts are further honed and the system can predictively alert app users based on location and preference presets. The technology, which uses machine learning and real-time data feeds, has been present in TWC's tools for about a year. The system can also push content out to social media platforms based on set conditions, such as a thunderstorm warning with some targeting capabilities. Avid AI, on the other hand, works to make content indexing and archiving easier, adding new search features based on speech-to-text, facial recognition, language detection and scene detection. Of course, with a technology like this, you're gambling that the metadata entered is correct when you go to search for it years down the road. Metadata and ingest represent a popular application for A.I., helping reduce staff time on a tedious task, but one must proceed with caution to ensure accuracy and dependability. "I used to work at NBC radio and we moved locations.