“Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.” ~ Ray Kurzweil
The evolution of artificial intelligence is revolutionary. From being seen as a niche to being part of everyday aspects of human life, AI has snowballed into a reckonable force to the point of being called — the fourth industrial revolution.
What is artificial intelligence’s role in Gaming, Media, and Entertainment — the three pillars that are the future of content consumption?
Gaming — the Foundation Stone for AI
No matter how far AI has come today, its inception and widespread success can be attributed to gaming, which has acted as a strong base where AI has been able to spread its wings.
With the available amount of data, the use cases for Artificial Intelligence are aplenty.
Gameplay Enhancement
One of the most widely used use cases is for NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) in games.
For story-based games, enemy and ally behavior is gameplay-critical. Sure, a committed player can read the patterns over time and finally beat a boss level in games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but the engaging yet challenging gameplay is the bare minimum today; and this is where AI is calling the shots.
The future looks even more interesting where AI will mimic human players to provide an authentic gameplay experience even when playing with NPCs which is crucial in PvE (Player VS Enemy) and PvP(Player VS Player) games.
This is crucial as many regions have an issue with the scarcity of lobby population, and bots are populated to fill the lobby. Bots are predictable and boring, making for a lackluster gameplay experience for the players. With new artificial intelligence and machine learning advancements, developers may be able to program bots that can provide quality gameplay engagement resulting in increased in-game time and spend of players.
Improved Graphics
There are avenues for AI to help graphical scaling that enhances gameplay experience across players and platforms.
The leap from NVIDIA’s 20 series to 30 series of GPUs was significant and paved the way for ray tracing technology. The graphical upgrade cycle is shortening every year, and players are starting to feel the heat. Upgrading to new hardware on a regular cycle is not a feasible option.
Furthermore, there are other challenges.
A chip shortage is currently plaguing the industry, and there is astronomical inflation of gaming hardware.
With the help of AI, scaling graphics in real-time can be a game-changer.
Another area where AI will set a milestone is in player moderation. At a recent event, Jonathan Lane, Sr. Director, Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning at Activision, said, “Behavioral moderation is a game-specific challenge.” People can be kind to each other or very unkind to each other. It is nearly impossible for a human to moderate all the behavior, so we have to rely on AI to be able to see when people are being toxic to each other when people are making the gameplay experience, through either cheating or fraud, an unsafe place for other people. That’s an important area where we can reduce some time by using AI Watch his enticing session highlight here.
Gaming is where artificial intelligence technology has proven its mettle, covering multiple areas across the domain. With gaming seeing a global mainstream adaptation, AI is now at the center stage.
But this is only the beginning.
Gaming is only one domain where AI has a proven track record, but it is not the only industry that can benefit from the prowess of AI.
AI’s Role in Media & Entertainment
Pop culture has always been the first to hype AI and they’ve seen success with every artificial intelligence movie. But AI has tremendous success behind the screens as well. AI is rewriting the content game; and by doing so, it is setting a new path in the field of media and entertainment.
Movie production processes utilize artificial intelligence technology for scheduling, storyboarding, budgeting, auto subtitle generation, and many others have the most to benefit from AI owing to its efficiency and elimination of the human error factor.
Personalization in the Content Game
Media and entertainment witnessed an epic transformation with the shift towards content streaming. In the music industry players like Spotify, Amazon and SoundCloud have reaped the benefits of the “cloud and AI” combination. Nobody downloads MP3 files and carries them around in a music player(except the purist and hobbyist audiophiles).
Movies and TV have witnessed one of the biggest paradigms shifts with Cloud and AI. OTTs are thriving in the game of content now, and viewers have nothing but tons of content options.
AI lead media and entertainment market is projected to hit US$8.4 billion in 2023.
While the cloud has played a pivotal role in this shift, AI has been silently powering it at the core. Personalized content recommendations are a must-have for any OTT player today, and this is one of the key areas where AI has been instrumental.
But we aren’t even at the peak of this content battle. In the recent 2022 virtual symposium, Shobana Radhakrishnan, Senior Director of Engineering at Google TV, said “Can we provide a content-powered experience for the users so they can avoid the pain of searching through a bunch of content and actually finding something pleasing to watch very quickly?” Here is her complete session.
With the interconnected online ecosystem and a rise in the amount of data generated by the ever-increasing reliance on technology, the possibilities for providing hyper-personalized content at the press of a button for a diverse demographic combination across geography are ripe, and AI is at the helm as a driving force towards achieving that milestone.
Web 3.0 Will Ride on the Coattails of AI
“Leaps don’t come often — the internet, gaming, cloud, and the metaverse. It changes the world in some capacity. It completely changes ecologically how we look and go about our very lives and exist globally”- said Christopher Lafayette, Founder, Gatherverse, in the recent virtual symposium- How AI Is Transforming Gaming, Media & Entertainment. Watch Christopher talk about Metaverse, Web 3.0, and his exciting vision here.
While the metaverse will be a significant element of the next version of the web, AI is the unsung hero that will structure the path as we move towards the next era of the web.
Ethical AI will be a key player in online privacy, while other elements such as privacy, content ownership, digital ownership, royalty, and new payment mechanisms will be vital, the confluence of AI and the cloud will facilitate every process, transaction, and activity across the web since the data will be immeasurably massive. Only AI can power such a complex rig, the ecosystem that will be the initial milestone as we step into the next decade.
Interested in gaming, media & entertainment? Explore what the veterans in the media & entertainment industry think the next decade will be like for the industry; watch their insightful sessions here.
Affine is a pivotal player in AI & analytics, passionate towards helping Gaming, Media & Entertainment companies achieve their vision. We are passionate about visions, and would like nothing more than to sit with you to discuss your vision!
Reach out to us at gaming@affine.ai to discuss more!
