Business

HITS Spring: Cinelytic, MicroStrategy Bring AI, ML Know-How

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Experts from both Cinelytic and MicroStrategy were on hand May 23 at the annual HITS Spring event, bringing ideas on how machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence can change the game with both predictive and enterprise analytics.

“People agreed that the time is now for ML/AI to help enhance the creative process and overall workflow,” said Cinelytic CEO Tobias Queisser after the event. “They agreed that we will not change the business but augment its capabilities to make faster, better-informed decisions.”

Queisser’s presentation — “Predictive Insights at Your Fingertips: A Better Way to Evaluate Content” — showed how a studio can leverage the latest technologies to improve content evaluation, reducing time spent on repetitive processing tasks, and generating actionable insights, in real time. Queisser took attendees through a live demo of his company’s system.

“I was able to outline our talent search engine, comparative titles search engine, predictive analytics module with scenario based forecasting, as well as the accompanying financial models (budget, sales estimates, ROI waterfall and domestic/international forecasts) that the system provides,” he said. “The audience found real-world applications and appreciated seeing purpose built tools, ready to help in their day to day functions.”

Audience questions ranged from the potential to better de-risk slates with a more methodical approach, to how the talent score can be used when evaluating the creative packages of a film, he added. “Our platform can be used in conjunction with creative instinct and experience to lever the best of both worlds: art and science/tech.”

Meanwhile, Rick Pechter, VP of predictive analytics for MicroStrategy, showed in his presentation — “An Intelligent Way to Drive Adoption of Enterprise Analytics Using ML/DL/AL” — how companies can modernize their analytical capabilities with ML and AI, a continuation of a presentation on “Deep Learning” he gave during the 2018 HITS Fall program.

Pervasive, intelligent analytics can transform a business, but Pechter shared an estimate that analytics reach a mere 30% of employees in most organizations, and to get that to 100%, organizations need platforms like MicroStrategy’s, ones that support diverse analytical tool sets and offer an authoring experience that makes deploying applications to any touchpoint simple.

He shared five keys to deploying AI in the enterprise, ones most companies don’t have: Educated leaders, properly curated data, money to experiment, a large, diverse team of quantitative analysts, and “freedom to pursue uncertain goals through unproven methods … and fail miserably.”

HITS Spring was presented by Entertainment Partners, with sponsorship by LiveTiles, 5th Kind, AWS, Birlasoft, Exactuals, Expert System, MarkLogic, Microsoft Azure, Richey May Technology Solutions, SoftServe, Spark Digital, Avanade, CDSA, Cinelytic, EIDR, MicroStrategy, Signiant, the Trusted Partner Network, human-I-T, and Zaszou IT Consulting.

The event was produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) and the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), in association with Women in Technology: Hollywood (WiTH); the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA); and the Smart Content Council.

Click here to download the Cinelytic presentation. Click here to download the MicroStrategy presentation.