Twitter's Artificial Intelligence Knows What's Happening in Live Video Clips

Right now, someone somewhere is live-streaming something interesting. Thanks to technology being developed by a team of artificial intelligence researchers at Twitter, you may soon be able to find it. Live-streaming is becoming ever-more popular through smartphone apps such as Periscope from Twitter, Meerkat, and, most recently, Facebook Live. But live video content usually isn't tagged or categorized well, often because people don't know what they'll record until the camera begins rolling. Twitter's AI team, known as Cortex, has developed an algorithm that can instantly recognize what's happening in a live feed. The algorithm can tell, for instance, if the star of a clip is playing guitar, demoing a power tool, or is actually a cat hamming it up for viewers.