Generative AI, which refers to artificial intelligence systems that can generate new content based on learned patterns and data, has transformative potential across a wide range of industries. Here’s a deeper look into how this technology can be applied in healthcare, entertainment, and design:

Healthcare

1. Drug Discovery and Development:

Generative AI can accelerate the drug discovery process by predicting molecular behavior and generating new compounds that might be effective against specific diseases. This reduces the time and cost associated with traditional drug discovery methods.

2. Personalized Medicine:

AI models can generate personalized treatment plans by analyzing patient data, including genetic information, lifestyle, and previous health records. This can lead to more effective and tailored treatments for individual patients.

3. Medical Imaging:

AI can enhance image analysis in radiology and pathology. Generative models can improve the clarity of medical images, generate synthetic data for training purposes, and even help in reconstructing missing or corrupted data.

4. Prosthetics and Implants Design:

AI can assist in designing custom prosthetics and implants by generating models that perfectly fit the unique anatomical structure of patients. This can improve comfort and functionality for the user.

Entertainment

1. Content Creation:

In film, music, and gaming, generative AI can create new scripts, compose music, or develop new gaming environments and scenarios. This can lead to more innovative and engaging content.

2. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality:

AI can generate immersive environments that are indistinguishable from real life, enhancing the user experience in VR and AR applications. This technology can create dynamic scenarios that react to the user’s actions in real-time.

3. Animation and Visual Effects:

Generative AI can automate part of the animation process, creating realistic and complex animations that would be time-consuming and costly to produce manually. It can also be used to enhance visual effects in movies and video games.

Design

1. Architectural and Industrial Design:

AI can help designers by generating multiple design alternatives based on specific criteria like space utilization, energy efficiency, or aesthetic preferences. This allows designers to explore more options and optimize designs more efficiently.

2. Fashion and Textile Design:

In fashion, AI can predict trends and generate new designs based on past styles, current trends, and emerging preferences. It can also help in creating custom clothing by generating patterns and designs that fit individual customers.

3. User Experience (UX) and Interface Design:

AI can generate design elements that are optimized for usability and aesthetic value, helping UX designers create more effective interfaces. It can also simulate user interactions to predict how changes to the design will impact user experience.

Cross-Industry Applications

1. Automation of Creative Processes:

Across industries, generative AI can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, allowing humans to focus on more strategic and creative aspects of their work.

2. Enhanced Decision Making:

By generating forecasts, scenarios, and models, AI can aid in complex decision-making processes, providing insights that might not be apparent through traditional methods.

3. Training and Simulation:

Generative AI can create realistic scenarios for training purposes across various fields, from piloting aircraft to medical surgery simulations, enhancing the learning experience without the associated risks of real-world training.

Generative AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data and generate insightful outputs makes it a powerful tool in these and many other industries, potentially leading to innovations that can transform the way we live and work.

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Artificial Intelligence has been on the tech agenda for more than two decades now, although its impact on our day-to-day lives is perhaps yet to be fully realized. Perceptions of AI’s innovation are broad and have altered over time.

For many, AI is an exciting new tool that will improve the quality of our lives, at home and work, by being able to deliver functions that will save us time and enhance our experiences in the world of leisure and entertainment. But for others, AI is perceived as a threat to our livelihoods. Old-fashioned perceptions push the narrative that technology must be managed and developed slowly – or not developed at all – to protect our ways of life.

This has contributed to AI receiving only sporadic funding and being dismissed by some as a pipe dream. However, we will discuss the positive impact that AI is having on the world of digital entertainment, and in particular in the world of bingo and online casino gaming.

That’s entertainment

Although many may not realize AI is already readily utilized as a part of several mainstream digital entertainment experiences. For example, Netflix viewers will receive recommendations of what to watch next based on the technology. AI is used to interpret data and produce an algorithm that displays film and TV suggestions that will likely appeal to the user based on their previous habits. In this instance, AI is helping to deliver a much more bespoke, personalized experience to paying subscribers.

In gaming, AI can be used to set a difficultly level based on the player’s abilities and can make configuration recommendations to enhance the player’s experience. Where human guidance is not possible, AI helps to keep new players on track.

Other gaming sectors, such as online casino gaming, have contrasting relationships with AI. Some platforms utilize the technology in a similar way to traditional console titles to automatically change personalization. It can also be used to speed up manual processes, such as repeating a previous bet or warning the player against ‘twisting’ in a game of blackjack when they have a good hand. Others instead use more tried and tested innovations such as random number generators to ensure games are fair.

Some businesses in the casino sector have adopted the technology to try and enhance the experience for players.  Sue Dawson from Best New Bingo Sites explains how “In real money online gaming, AI can be used for targeting marketing and advertising so that players receive promotional offers that are tailored to their preferences and behavior. For instance, you might receive an offer of free spins for the slot game you play most often at the time of day you’re most likely to play. The games themselves are strictly regulated, though, and must use verified RNG to ensure that all players have the same chance of winning.”

The future

As is the case in any area of technology, it’s fascinating to speculate what the future may hold for AI. Already developers are experimenting with its use in spheres like art and even literature. Art AI Gallery offers images for sale that have been generated by artificial intelligence, while developers have experimented with using AI to write plays, make music, and script films.

It’s clear from the evidence that AI is already a major part of many lives, and as the technology behind it advances, it’s likely that will see further leaps forward taken in the years and decades to come.

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The world of entertainment is changing rapidly. Increased access to fibre to the home, as well as a growing number of content creators and video-on-demand services are forcing large entertainment companies to rethink their business strategies and innovate new and exciting ways to delight their customers.

The MultiChoice Group and its companies have long provided subscribers across Africa with quality content, but in this new highly competitive and dynamic environment, it is imperative that it adapts its content and the way it delivers the content if it wants to remain one of Africa’s most successful entertainment businesses.

As part of its digital transformation journey, the MultiChoice Group partnered with Microsoft South Africa across various solutions including Azure, Microsoft 365, D365 and security services. Key to the relationship is the fact that both organisations share a future view of responsible innovation, as well as technologies and solutions that empower end users.

The partnership is enabling MultiChoice to deal with the challenges of its ever-changing industry by driving efficiencies in the business through collaboration, and to explore innovative ways of delivering content to its subscribers thanks to artificial intelligence and big data analytics.

MultiChoice is streamlining its business, becoming more agile and innovative.

As a crucial partner in MultiChoice’s digital transformation journey, Microsoft provides the platform and toolsets that allow it to take its new agile offerings to market quicker, cheaper and better.

Azure as a platform for innovation:

MultiChoice’s digital transformation journey with Microsoft started four years ago when the company began exploring the use of Azure as a platform. Initial explorations began with light loads within the business’s IT division, looking at the migration of tape libraries into the cloud. Since then, the relationship has grown exponentially, and MultiChoice is now running test and production workloads across the business. Optimising operations where possible and using Azure as an innovation platform.

In 2018 during the FIFA World Cup in Russia, MultiChoice demonstrated the power of cloud technology when it was able to stream the semi-final and final of the tournament to subscribers in 4k on the Azure platform, demonstrating just how quick and easy it is to spin up these types of services in the cloud and to deliver them to MultiChoice’s customer base.

“MultiChoice has chosen Azure as a key platform on their journey to the cloud,” says Alkis Flemetakis, Account Director – Enterprise Commercial at Microsoft Corporation. “They are continuously assessing the environment and over the last four years, have created prototypes and MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) on the Microsoft cloud platform. Currently, MultiChoice are looking at migrating significant IT workloads to Azure and using AI and machine learning to develop innovative solutions for their customers.”

One such project, which is currently in proof of concept, is the dubbing and subtitling of content for different markets.

Says Brad Eliot: Group Chief Information Officer at MultiChoice: “We produce a lot of our own local content and there’s a drive to see if we can use speech recognition to dub and subtitle that content. With the volume of media assets, we have literally thousands and thousands of hours of content, so doing this in a non-automated fashion would just be impossible and inefficient”.

A second key development, which will be launched next year, is automated highlights packages for sport.

Using Azure, MultiChoice will be able to produce highlights packages in near real-time for use not only in live broadcasts but also on social media platforms, meaning MultiChoice can still deliver live, easy-to-consume content to customers who are on-the-go but still want access to their favourite sporting content.

Another added value service being explored is that of automated content moderation. Using machine learning, MultiChoice is exploring ways to automate the moderation of profanity, nudity and violence – linking to Microsoft’s approach to responsible AI and providing customers with the peace of mind that their children will not have access to inappropriate content in the future.

MultiChoice is additionally looking to harness the power of AI and co-create innovation that is locally relevant. Through its partnership with Microsoft, MultiChoice is looking to leverage AI, Mixed Reality and Cognitive Services technologies that are radically changing the audience experience compared to traditional static linear TV.

There is also the potential to use AI to improve accessibility for MultiChoice customers. Microsoft’s Seeing AI app, for instance, narrates the world around a person, describing people, texts and objects, while Microsoft Translator provides real-time captions for the deaf or hard of hearing.

Other players in the Media and Entertainment industry are already enjoying success by leveraging these technologies: SkySports is using Mixed Reality for audiences to interact with well-known golfers, obtain vital stats on their games, as well as accessories, and US Football live event producers are using Mixed Reality to bring the real-life experience of the stadium to the home or sports pub. Families, friends can also engage in the experience using immersive technology.

This shows that there are significant opportunities for MultiChoice within AI, Mixed Reality and Cognitive Services.

MultiChoice also recognises that there are opportunities available by leveraging the power of Microsoft’s partnerships with leading media partner solutions which run on Azure, contributing to the modernisation of the broadcast value chain with a smooth transition in operations and minimal upskilling of staff as well as improving time to market.

Leveraging the insights from data

The ability to capture data, analyse it and then do more with it is top of mind for MultiChoice. The cloud allows for MultiChoice to store enormous amounts of data and overlay data analytics in order to develop valuable insights on how to better serve its customers.

This insight then allows MultiChoice to shift from being a blanket content provider to being able to personalise the delivery of its services to its subscribers based on better knowledge of local audiences, ultimately placing it on an even footing with content providers who offer similar services.

MultiChoice can also analyse data on its devices enabling it to predict when a device might run out of space and even monitor the device’s health, ultimately reducing costs when it comes to customer support.

“We are moving towards a data and analytics driven organisation,” says Eliot. “Our data warehouses have content that facilitates understanding of our subscriber preferences. We are modernising our data warehouses and Microsoft is helping us with their existing technologies. At the same time, we are looking to see how we can modernise our data structures by looking at Azure data services. We are currently looking at proof of concepts for technologies such as sim apps and hyperscale.”

Trust as a key factor in opening up new opportunities

Eliot believes that working with Microsoft has opened up opportunities that MultiChoice would never have been able to pursue without the access to cloud computing.

“The volume of data that we have and hundreds of petabytes of media assets – to do subtitling or to do content discovery across those volumes would be impossible and inefficient with on-premises compute. You have to have the scale of the cloud, and that’s where these new kinds of opportunities are being opened up and are becoming quite real for the first time. The machine learning that we can do and the artificial intelligence that we’re working on really wouldn’t be possible without access to big cloud compute.”

Overall, trust has been the key factor that drove MultiChoice to partner with Microsoft on its digital transformation journey. “Microsoft is in the business of collaborating with and helping organisations digitally transform, with their technologies and tools enabling their customers’ success in a seamless way,” he says.

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