AIMICI was invited to speak on the “Innovating with AI” panel at the BBC Production Unlocked event.
The event invited hundreds of production professionals to join the AI conversation, online via livestream and in person at BBC Studios in Bristol.
Panelists included Exec Producer Philip Dalton, Aardman CTO Steven Shapiro, BBC’s Senior Responsible AI Manager Lianne Kerlin & Charisma.ai’s Guy Gadney.
Kathryn, AIMICI’S CEO, helped to explain the full spectrum of what AI can be and how it can be used, and discussed the opportunities for using AI in production, especially for documentaries and factual content.
Philip shared an example of how he uses AI in his productions, explaining his plans for an AI-driven autonomous gorilla robot in the new instalment of his “Spy in the Troop” series.
Lianne shared the BBC’s responsible AI principles and showed them in action through a recent factual series that used AI to anonymise victims of a crime during their interviews. Generative AI was used to maintaining their facial expressions and emotions, without showing the victim’s true faces or identities. This series included an up-front disclaimer to show that AI had been used in order to not confuse viewers.
Steven shared the tactical ways that AI has been used at Aardman Animations, including automatic removal of hands and props from stop motion footage. Steven is also advising on Guy’s Charismatic Consortium project which looks to research how AI can help new diverse creators to bring their visions to life more easily. Research reports from the initiative are soon to be published.
The session concluded with Q&A, chaired by Jo Lansdowne, Executive Producer at Pervasive Media Studio. We discussed wide ranging topics, from the emotional impact of a “synthetic ape” being added then removed from an ape community, to copyright concerns, to where to get the best resources to better understand AI.
