BBC announces AI programming focus

BBC announces AI programming focus
Editor
| 18 August 2018

As part of its strategy to deploy cutting-edge technology within broadcasting, the BBC has announced that it will bring two nights of experimental programming to BBC based on artificial intelligence.
BBC AI 17Aug2018

On 4 and 5 September, the BBC Four channel will show BBC 4.1 Artificial Intelligence TV featuring new and classic programmes exploring AI, including Made by Machine: When AI Met the Archive, a new and experimental programme part-made by AI to help show how it works, and The Joy of AI, where Professor Jim Al Khalili tells the story of the pursuit of AI, the emergence of machine learning and recent breakthroughs.

Using the latest AI technology from BBC Research & Development, the BBC discovered programmes from its archive, scanning programme information dating back to 1953 from over 250,000 TV programmes. The AI learnt what BBC Four audiences might like, based on the channel’s previous schedules and programme attributes, and then ranked programmes it thought were most relevant.
The BBC stressed that doing this manually would be impractical as it would take hundreds of hours. The other business benefit was that researchers and schedulers to uncover programmes they may never have been able to find, and will broadcast a selection that haven’t been seen in years.

The same archive-scanning AI has been used to co-create Made by machine: When AI met the archive – a new and experimental programme exploring how BBC R&D’s technology works. Presented by Dr Hannah Fry and a virtual co-presenter, it features four segments of archive clips sourced and edited together by the AI, using four core techniques. First, the AI learns to identify what a scene consists of, such as the type of landscape, what objects there are, whether people are featured and what they might be wearing; the second segment follows the AI as it scans the subtitles of archive programmes and then looks for connections between words, topics and themes as it pieces footage together thirdly it shows the AI analysing whether there’s a lot of activity on screen (high energy) or not (low energy); lastly the AI draws on what it’s learnt using all three techniques to create a new piece of content.

“AI and machine learning sit at the centre of a huge ongoing debate,” remarked Cassian Harrison, channel editor, BBC Four. “With its brief to experiment, BBC Four is grasping the nettle by the hand with this bold experiment to investigate just how AI might open up new creative opportunities. In collaboration with the BBC's world-beating R&D department, AI TV will explore the cutting edge of this new technology and demonstrate just how AI and machine learning might inform and influence programme-making and scheduling, while also resurfacing some gems from the BBC Four archive along the way. It's telly Jim, but not as we know it...”