Artificial Intelligence firm predicts results of 2017 Oscars Access AI

A US company claims to already know the nominations and winner of Best Picture for next months annual Academy Awards – aka the Oscars, by using artificial intelligence. The Massachusetts based start-up, Luminoso, unveiled its list (see below) almost two weeks before voting for the list of nominees officially closes (January 24) – and more than a month before the awards takes place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood (February 26). The firm generated the results by first pulling together over 84,000 reviews written by movie goers (not critics) which have been published on the IMDB website over the past four years (2013-2016) . It then used its Natural Language Processing software, 'Luminoso Analytics', to analyze the text and identify correlations between topics discussed in the reviews and the eventual Oscar nominees and winners. It found that certain terms, including "narrative," "cinematography," "plot," "visuals," "stunning," "experience," and "masterpiece," were more prevalent in reviews of moves that later went on to be nominated and/or win the Oscars.