Using AI for automatic shot listing in news at Associated Press

Presenter(s): Maarten Verwaest (Limecraft)

In 2019, the Associated Press (AP) – the world’s largest international news agency – instigated a project to leverage AI technology to shorten its production process so that its customers could receive content more quickly, while significantly reducing manual input, freeing its own staff for more creative purposes. In this presentation, service provider Limecraft explains how this transformation was handled, using computer vision for scene description, facial recognition and gesture detection alongside Automatic Speech Recognition, together delivering a single, coherent and frame-accurate description of every individual shot. The pipeline now processes 20,000 hours of original footage per year. The presentation also goes over lessons learnt, the do's and don'ts of using AI in production, and practical guidance to ensure successful implementation of such projects.