As the computer industry progresses, and we get to use forms of artificial intelligence on our phones or hire an A.I. lawyer that helps human lawyers research faster, the scientists are trying to make machines mimic the “cognitive” functions. One of the biggest players in the deep learning field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is IBM’s Watson – a supercomputer that can recognize what’s in your photos, predict which toys will be popular during the Christmas period and even out-perform the best players of popular American TV show, Jeopardy. The scientists at IBM Research, together with 20th Century Fox, have used Watson to produce the first-ever “cognitive” film trailer of all time for the sci-fi horror film, Morgan.IBM-watson-morgan-small

IBM and Fox decided to employ machine learning techniques and utilize APIs of the super-resourceful supercomputer, as the movie company wanted use the AI to create a suspenseful horror movie trailer “that would keep audiences on the edge of their seats”. The IBM team first had to teach a system to understand “what is scary” and then create such a trailer that would be acclaimed as “frightening and suspenseful” by a larger audience. For the first step the Research team trained Watson by feeding it 100 horror-movie trailers which were cut into individual segments. The first ever AI to produce such a task then conducted a series of analyses – visual analysis and identification of the people, objects and scenery; an audio analysis of the ambient sounds; and an analysis of each scene’s composition.IMB-morgan-action-scenes-small

Once it “watched” the full feature movie, the computer identified 10 moments totalling six minutes of video. Yet, a residential IBM filmmaker still had to edit each of these moments together into a comprehensive trailer. Still, the company managed to reduce a time-consuming and expensive process (that usually takes from 10 to 30 days to complete) from the moment Watson finished watching Morgan for the first time to the filmmaker’s final editing to astonishing 24 hours. By reducing the processing time, AI is showing its true value to the movie makers. Let us know what you, the target audience, think of the first-ever, AI-produced movie trailer in the comments. You can watch the trailer below and also take a look what two actual robots think about the trailer in an interesting “react-to” video.

Morgan – Official Trailer:

Credits:

IBM & Fox Movies