AI Is Already Entertaining You

In the fall of 2016, a pop song was released in Japan. "Daddy's Car," derivative of a Beatles tune, had a soothing beat and vaguely uplifting lyrics: "Good day sunshine in the backseat car / I wish that road could never stop." The ditty was distinctive for its authorship. Sony's Computer Science Laboratories in Paris produced the song, which was written by an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Flow Machines. The melody and harmony were composed by AI, and a human musician mixed the sound and wrote lyrics for the track. AI -- the new set of technologies that perform tasks that require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, decision making, and learning -- is rapidly working its way into business operations within many global industries. Some members of the entertainment and media (E&M) industry have downplayed its potential. After all, these are creative industries in which both the germ of the business and the value added to it stem from the contribution of human ingenuity and people exchanging ideas. The most successful E&M products and services rely on connecting creative content, brands, and experiences with audiences.