Philipp Rotermund, CEO of Video Solutions-owned video streaming and FAST portal WedoTV, explores how artificial intelligence has made business less mundane and inefficient but argues human oversight is still required.
Philipp Rotermund
In the last few weeks, I don’t think a day has gone by where there wasn’t a news item about the existential threat of rapidly advancing and improving generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. With the EU leading the rest of the world, the EU AI Act seeks to limit AI applications and possibly set the global standard for AI.
Determining the extend to which AI has a positive rather than negative effect on your life will be the subject of much discussion, regardless of what the lawmakers eventually get passed. In the meantime, it is undeniable that AI has the ability to make many mundane or labour-intensive tasks as easy as a few keystrokes.
However, as nearly every AI-powered chatbot warns, it’s important to fact-check all AI-generated work and be mindful not only of possible errors, but also misinterpretations and biases.
As the operator of multiple AVoD and FAST channels in Europe, North America and Australia, one of the very helpful uses of AI technology that I’ve experienced has been in localising our content for viewers. We first launched in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and then in the UK, using standard translation services for subtitles for English and German. But when we decided to expand outside of our ‘home territories’ and launch in Italy, we began our first engagement with AI.
Large language models (LLM) are being used to create what’s known as ‘universal translators’. These are AI systems that can take video content in one language and translate it in real time into another language. For example, a show in Spanish could be automatically translated and subtitled in German, or vice versa. This is possible because LLMs are trained on massive amounts of text data, which enables them to understand the structure and meaning of language. They can then use this understanding to translate video content in a way that preserves the meaning and intent of the original.
Hiring human translators for every new language can be cost-prohibitive, and sometimes the time needed to translate is an impediment to getting up and running quickly – a make-or-break situation, especially in the rapidly expanding world of FAST channels.
The human touch is still needed – at least for now…
AI systems are constantly improving and there are a few strategies that can be used to help them translate more and more accurately. That said, as brilliant and incredibly fast as these systems can be, in my experience it would be a mistake to rely solely on AI without having some accuracy safeguards in place. Otherwise, you might find yourself with some situations that are funny at best, but embarrassing or potentially offensive at worst.
For example, translating figures of speech and idioms can be a challenge for even the most sophisticated systems, as they require a deeper understanding of the cultural and linguistic context in which they are used. Many figures of speech are unique to a particular language or culture, and they can have multiple meanings that are not always obvious to someone who is not a native speaker.
Similarly, idioms are often used metaphorically and can be difficult to translate. For example, the English expression ‘it’s a piece of cake,’ meaning ‘it’s easy,’ might be translated to ‘è un pezzo di torta’ – a literal ‘slice of cake’ – in Italian.
Another AI tool we’ve been testing out selects thumbnail images for episodic content based on the user’s preferences. This tool has also proven useful in selecting the right place for an ad break. Both tasks have previously been the mundane work of promo directors and editors, whose time and creativity could be utilised elsewhere to much better and significant effect. But once again, as impressive as these tools are, I wouldn’t let them run unchecked by human intelligence and, most importantly, judgement.
For WedoTV, as a smaller channel creator and distributor, using these tools makes our content more accessible to a global audience while customising the experience on an individual user basis. So, while AI translation, promo stills creation and ad placement are not yet perfect, they are becoming increasingly accurate and efficient, and it’s likely such things will become the norm in the global TV industry in the foreseeable future.
