Tractors are commonly sold to farmers at agricultural fairs and announced in the trade press. But machinery makers are falling over themselves to get a slice of a much more unlikely advertising vehicle: the Farming Simulator video game. The developer, Giants Software, now receives hundreds of queries a year from manufacturers of equipment – from tractors and combine harvesters to trailers, balers and seed drills – about how they can feature in the game, where players create their own virtual farm. Farming Simulator is important enough that some firms even launch products at the same time as the game is updated. Search for news about Göweil, and you're just as likely to find details of the nine products in the Farming Simulator update pack released last week as coverage of its hay balers in the real world.

Ricky Ray Butler is CEO of BEN, an entertainment AI company that places brands into influencer, streaming, TV, music and film content. As everything in our lives -- including entertainment -- turns digital, we're starting to recognize the negative impact that digital consumption and technology have on the environment. For instance, Carbon Trust recently reported that streaming just one hour of the newest binge-worthy TV show requires the same amount of energy as boiling a kettle for six minutes. It might not sound like much, but it adds up quickly, especially as content consumption spiked in 2020 and our time spent engaging with digital media is expected to increase another nine minutes this year. Businesses and consumers alike are looking for ways to mitigate their carbon footprint, and people aren't just gaining awareness around sustainability when it comes to consumer and enterprise technology.

A UK technology company is inserting customised product placement into films and TV shows – even those that were originally released decades ago. The firm uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse films and TV episodes for space where the ads or objects can be subtly inserted. It means old Hollywood classics like Casablanca or The Great Escape could soon appear on streaming services with the newest ads in the background, like a new Apple smartphone or the latest McDonald's whopper. Streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video could be temped by large offers from companies to insert their ads to content, to accompany the subscription fees from its userbase. Mirriad's technology could even allow different ads to be seen by different people, based on their internet search history, just like targeted ads on Facebook.

Since online shopping became a reality, retail has become increasingly digital and internet-driven. Bricks and mortar stores have adopted elements of the online experience to encourage us to continue visiting them, and also played to the strengths that in-person experiences can offer, such as more personal levels of service. But the coronavirus pandemic has affected the way every trend will play out in 2021, and offline retail has been hit particularly hard. This has led to widespread job losses and famous names disappearing from shopping centers around the world. At the same time, online retail has boomed more quickly than ever before as consumers choose to remain safely indoors, and home delivery infrastructure becomes increasingly sophisticated.

Tango Eye, a Chennai-based AI video analytics startup that converts CCTV data into actionable insights, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Delhi-based eyewear retailer Lenskart, which entered the elite unicorn club last year. Silicon Valley-based seed fund RiSo capital and angel investor Gaurav Gulati, Co-founder, Innov8 (acquired by Oyo) also participated in the round. Currently implemented at about 1,000 outlets, the startup said the new funding will help scale to 10,000 outlets in addition to expanding the product features. In a release, Tango Eye said that this investment will enable Lenskart to enhance customer experience, security and safety protocols in stores, and merchandising placement, among others. Founded in 2018, Tango Eye uses AI and Computer Vision to deliver a SaaS solution that utilises existing CCTV cameras to measure social distancing, improve sales conversion, optimise product placement and monitor SOPs across retail outlets.

Connecting consumers with relevant products is a very important problem in both online and offline commerce. In physical retail, product placement is an effective way to connect consumers with products. However, selecting product locations within a store can be a tedious process. Moreover, learning important spatial patterns in offline retail is challenging due to the scarcity of data and the high cost of exploration and experimentation in the physical world. To address these challenges, we propose a stochastic model of spatial demand in physical retail. We show that the proposed model is more predictive of demand than existing baselines. We also perform a preliminary study into different automation techniques and show that an optimal product allocation policy can be learned through Deep Q-Learning.

Editors' Note: Industry veteran Arvin Patel is Chief Intellectual Property Officer at TiVo and former chief IPO officer at Technicolor, with previous stints at Rovi and IBM. At TiVo, he oversees the company's annual $400 million IP business and about 6,000 issued patents, as well as its pending applications worldwide. He also leads TiVo's global organization of IP professionals overseeing portfolio development and management, licensing, strategic patent acquisition, policy, and the company's long-term innovation strategy. This year marks the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's seminal science fiction film that examined our evolution as human beings and technology's role in our development. Looking back, you can argue that Kubrick was surprisingly prescient in depicting man's relationship with machines as companies like Amazon, Google and Apple continue to invest in AI-related products and services.

Whether you're training to run a marathon or gearing up for a marathon of binge-watching TV, both athletes and casual sports fans can benefit from advances in sports video. Due to its widespread appeal, high demand, and abundance of related data, sports video is a prime candidate for innovation. Cog...

Viewers are more likely to be paying attention, and the clips ultimately reach a larger audience due to highlight reel replays and social media shares. First, by tuning an algorithm to look for specific entities -- in this case sponsors' logos -- cognitive technology can find and quantify brand placements in a video. With AI technology, production teams could efficiently source relevant content to integrate past segments into the current broadcast. To beat the competition, sports networks can utilize AI technology to provide an engaging viewer experience.

Whether you're training for a marathon race or gearing up for a marathon of binge-watching TV, both athletes and casual sports fans can benefit from advances in sports video. Due to its widespread appeal, high demand, and abundance of related data, sports video is a prime candidate for innovation. Cognitive technology is teed up to enhance the viewer experience and maximize advertising revenue. What's more, AI technology can disrupt the game itself. Here are the three main players in sports broadcasting that stand to gain the most from cognitive advancements in video technology.