One of the hottest topics of the last 12 months is artificial intelligence. AI is getting better at interpreting natural language queries and identifying the subject of images, plus creating new works of art itself. Seem like we’re constantly hearing of uses for AI, from coming up with new game ideas to helping compose music. Analysing and understanding huge data sets, then answering queries in a meaningful way to human operators, is only going to get more important in the next few years.
This month we spoke with Veritone, a leading AI enterprise solutions supplier. The company is building an ecosystem of machine learning models that work with audio, video and other data sources and turns them into useful business intelligence.
AI’s role in filmmaking
Veritone’s AI tech is now being used by OR Media, which provides a collection of stock footage for use by video creators. OR Media’s video clients include the BBC, Al Jazeera, Discovery and other big media brands. Plugging the AI tech into the new Orchard Clips database, including its Arabic-language service, enables video creators to sort and find clips more easily.
November’s partnership between the companies gave us an excuse to find out more about how AI works in the video space, so we contacted Billy Gil, Product Marketing Manager at Veritone.
Veritone Digital Media Hub is an AI-powered asset management and monetisation tool with AI-assisted metadata tagging as well as built-in rights management and sharing capabilities. Gil works at the intersection of AI and the media/broadcast industry. Veritone’s had a successful 2022, with revenue up 64% in Q3, as it continued to attract new customers and retain existing ones. It didn’t hurt that Veritone acquired PandoLogic last year, a New York-based AI-enabled recruitment and job advertising platform.
New Veritone interview
What can Gil tell us about the special sauce that Veritone’s AI tech brings to the world of digital media clips?
BeyondGames.biz: How does Veritone Digital Media Hub use AI to help creators discover and license the footage they need? Can you give us an overview of what Orchard Clips brings to the process too?
Billy Gil: Veritone Digital Media Hub, which is built on our Enterprise AI platform, aiWARE, connects users to an ecosystem of more than 300 AI engines. This allows users to use best-of-breed AI engines for their specific use cases, such as facial recognition, logo recognition, optical character recognition, and more. It helps organizations better find, share, and use their content, with instant access to descriptive information, including spoken words, faces, logos and advertiser names mentioned.
OR Media was seeking a partner with AI and licensing expertise and was looking for a solution that offered ease of use, flexibility, and affordability, and we are proud to have been able to fulfil that need with Veritone Digital Media Hub. Together with organizations such as OR Media, we’re excited to further define the capabilities of what Veritone Digital Media Hub can do to help rights holders of all kinds better manage and monetize their media.
What advantage does AI give over existing clip libraries? And what sets your AI-powered technology apart from the rest of the industry?
AI helps those with existing libraries easily manage them using their preferred cloud storage in a central location. Rights holders can use AI to easily tag their clips with metadata so it can easily be found and securely shared both internally and externally.
What sets us apart from the rest of the industry is our aiWARE platform. It gives you access to an ecosystem of more than 300 AI models that are consistently updated with the latest and greatest technology, so you can leverage AI models as needed, enabling you to only pay for what you are actively using at any given time. It also makes it easier to switch AI engines without disrupting your workflows.
And, with our AI-powered Veritone Digital Media Hub, video rights holders can take advantage of robust ecommerce features to stand up their own storefront in a matter of days. You can also syndicate your content with Veritone Licensing as a complete monetization package.
Who is your tech primarily aimed at? Who are your customers and what are their most pressing needs?
Veritone helps companies across various sectors transform their operations and solve the complexities of digital information today. Our AI solutions and rich partner ecosystem help our customers address their current and future challenges, empowering them to run more efficiently, accelerate decision-making, and gain a competitive edge, serving industries such as energy, government, legal and compliance, media and entertainment, financial services, healthcare, insurance, recruitment, and retail.
In the media and entertainment space, we help some of the world’s most recognizable brands bridge the gap between traditional enterprise software and cognitive insights with AI solutions and bespoke applications. Our clients across the film, radio, TV and sports industries include clients such as iHeartMedia, ESPN, CNBC, the San Francisco Giants, the LA Chargers, the USTA, Formula-E and Fox Sports.
We are working in the Arabic-language region ourselves at the moment. Why did Veritone Digital Media Hub identify Arabic as an important language in which to make Orchard Clips available?
Our client OR Media wanted to launch a new clip-licensing marketplace, Orchard Clips. But, as a leading producer with expertise in the Middle East, it needed to make it available in both English and Arabic so that its end-user audience of broadcasters and filmmakers could find, discover, and license the footage they needed in their preferred language.
We were proud to make our AI-powered, white-label asset management and monetization solution, Veritone Digital Media Hub, available with both its UI and end-user marketplace in Arabic as part of our ongoing efforts to help our clients reach more people, in more languages.
Earlier in 2022, we also made Veritone Digital Media Hub available in German, and we continue to translate the solution’s features and UI into additional languages to help our clients reach the right audience.
What’s your vision for the future of AI? What effect will machine learning and similar technologies have on the creative industries?
There will always be a human element. AI will become another tool creators can turn to to create new, personalized experiences and engagements. All of which will be driven by human creativity while enhancing the capability to achieve greater levels of scale and reach than previously achievable.
Discover AI online and in person
Find out more about Veritone and Orchard Clips at their official sites.
Artificial intelligence will continue to be an important topic for content creators; it’s a rapidly evolving field with many new developments happening all the time, and it has the potential to revolutionize different industries, with significant impact on fields such as art, healthcare and finance already. All our sibling sites will continue to cover AI and its role in creativity, visual arts and gaming.
Meanwhile, you will find AI talks and panels at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2023 in January.
Professional geek Dave is COO of Steel Media, the company behind Beyond Games. He oversees various events, marketing and editorial teams. Dave started his career writing game reviews in the 1990s and he’s since served as editor-in-chief of publications such as the official Microsoft magazine and entertainment mag SFX.
