Artificial intelligence is accelerating content production, automating repetitive tasks, and restoring archival materials. This was the key takeaway from participants in the round table, Post-Production at AI Speed: Opportunities for Emerging Content Markets.
Observing that advances in AI are reshaping the production process, Yury Yarushnikov, CEO of Extraordinary Ltd., explained that tasks once handled during post-production can now be tackled as early as pre-production. He pointed out that these technologies are also expediting scene creation and enhancing image detail.
“Right now, we’re essentially seeing a transformation of the production process, and the beauty of the entire situation is that nobody knows what the rules are. In other words, every studio and every major production company is inventing its own vision of the future for its own workflows,” Yarushnikov remarked.
Ilya Sobinov, Founder and Executive Producer of JUS Ltd., highlighted that artificial intelligence is opening up significant opportunities for creating television content. He predicted that the value of archival content will increase over time, and existing materials will become a source of revenue through licensing and reuse.
“Why create something new when it already exists? You can remaster it, keep it in-house, and use it again. I think we’ll see specialized content banks emerge, much like how we once had photo banks and then video banks,” he added.
Justice Ornan Abadah, Film Director, Producer, Creative Director, and IT Manager at ProdGate in Ghana, shared his experience deploying AI in his home country. He pointed out that neural networks in Ghana are widely used at the content-finalization stage. However, as a result, the final products are starting to look homogenous.
“It’s as if, to some extent, everything is starting to look the same, especially when it comes to audio. There are still plenty of shortcomings. It’s clear the technology is evolving and that everything, including quality, will improve. But right now in Ghana, people are turning to AI technologies a bit too heavily,” he observed.
Phafane Nkotsi of Lesotho, Founder and Group Managing Director of Bohlokoa Enterprises and Publisher of the Lesotho Tribune, explained that artificial intelligence is helping local professionals work on projects for which they previously lacked funding and technical expertise. He emphasized that AI makes it possible to restore archival materials.
“We face a real challenge – very poor databases and poor archives. The original photographs are kept in terrible condition. Artificial intelligence lets us solve that problem. We restore old material, old photographs, old videos, and everything else we have, and then use it to generate revenue,” he stated.
