Exploration #126

Hi all. Welcome to Public Media Innovator’s Weekly, and Happy Halloween! This week we’ve got a new(ish) video game series from PBS SoCal, our next AI webinar, more pieces from Adobe Max, and finally, the 14 best AI-generated fake movie trailers.

But First…

I’ve been playing a lot of catch-up this week from what was, essentially two months on the road. I want to say a thing or two about disruption, but the thoughts haven’t quite coalesced yet, so I’m tabling that for another week. Plus, I’m just gonna guess that your attentions aren’t wholly focused on emerging tech during this final week before polling day in the US. Existential opportunities and threats can wait. Democracy first.

When AI’s Tricks Are Your Treats

We’re three weeks out from our next webinar, and after dabbling in gaming for a couple of months, we’re taking the focus back to AI and we’re bringing in the station perspective. Steal This (AI)dea will feature perspectives from your peers in Community Engagement, Content, Cyber, Education & MarCom on the use of AI on the opportunities and challenges of integrating AI into station workflows. You can register for the webinar here.

And, sneak preview, we’ll be having a December webinar as well. The registration isn’t live yet but save the date for December 12 at 1:30pET/10:30aPT. We’re co-presenting a webinar (with the Executive Content Managers group) featuring an hour with Talia Rosen from PBS Standards & Practices on the practical applications and considerations for using generative media in content. Most importantly, she’ll be taking your questions!

Focus…

New Digital Series Combines Video Gameplay With Expert Insight in 'Won't You Be My Gamer?' Now Available to Stream on PBS SoCal's YouTube (PBS SoCal) - This launched last July but I've been remiss in not bringing it to you sooner. But, on the plus side, there are now 15+ episodes of the series waiting for your enjoyment.
—You can also jump straight to the Won't You Be My Gamer? playlist on YouTube.

Learn…

Steal This (AI)dea (NETA Peer Learning Communities) - Join us for an engaging roundtable discussion on how AI is shaping the working lives of your public media colleagues. This webinar will be facilitated by the Public Media Innovators PLC and co-led by all of NETA’s Peer Learning Communities—Community Engagement, Content, Cyber, Education & MarCom. The presentations will feature insights from your peers across the industry, offering diverse perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of integrating AI into station workflows. Each group will share practical insights, use cases, strategies (or deliberate non-use) for incorporating AI, providing you with the knowledge to navigate the evolving role of AI in public media. Whether your station is already utilizing AI or still considering its potential, this session will help demystify its impact and foster informed decision-making. You can register for the webinar here.

AI-Driven Audio for Storytelling & Content Creation (Davar Ardalan - TulipAI) - Explore AI-driven audio for storytelling, content creation, and historical reenactments. Enhance sound quality and create multilingual, ethical, and culturally rich content with instructors with experience at NPR, Nat Geo, and Drexel University.

Think…

PBS is Using AI Right Now. Are You? (Mikey Centrella - PBS) - Great summary from PBS' Director of Innovation of how that organization is experimenting with AI in their product prototypes. This one is worth reading both for information and inspiration.

Using AI to Improve TV Production Flow: A Media Ecology Perspective (Ling Ling Sun - TV Technology) - By virtue of publishing volume, as much as anything, I end up being the 'face of AI' at Nebraska Public Media. But others are thinking about these issues at the station as well, and none more so than the CTO, Ling Ling. In the piece she outlines potential impacts of AI on the production process, and reminds us, "The television industry has always been shaped by technological advancements, from live broadcasts to recorded shows to the revolution of digital editing. Each shift has not only changed production methods, but has also reshaped viewer expectations and the very operational aspects of televisual communication."

Donald Trump has threatened to shut down broadcasters, but can he? (Tom Wheeler - Brookings) - I don't usually tackle broadcast topics here, but I'm giving an existential exception to this one because it answered some questions that I hadn't been able to get answered elsewhere. I've been around long enough to see that, counterintuitively, public media often does better in terms of federal support during national political shifts to the right. But I've also been around long enough to acknowledge that we are now more than one standard deviation beyond the norm at this point, and when all the options on the table are nuclear it's helpful to know which buttons are actually wired.

Know…

Lenfest Institute, OpenAI and Microsoft announce $10 million AI Collaborative and Fellowship program for US metro news organizations (Microsoft) - H/t to Carla McCabe at WVIA for first sending this my way. Of special significance to those of us in public media is the award to “Chicago Public Media, which publishes The Chicago Sun-Times and runs public radio station WBEZ, will focus on leveraging AI for transcription, summarization and translation to expand content offerings and reach new audiences.” Looking forward to seeing some of these learnings filter down through the station.

Adobe’s AI video model is here, and it’s already inside Premiere Pro (Jess Weatherbed - The Verge) - I'm still on the waitlist for this, so drop me a line if you've had a chance to try it. The big advantage, as with their still imagery, is that Adobe warrants their generative video is commercially safe, since their model was not trained on thousands of scraped YouTube videos under the untested auspices of fair use. Perhaps more importantly, they are also rolling out an image-to-video tool, which would allow you to generate b-roll from a still image of a location. Eventually, I imagine that, using techniques similar to creating a NeRF now, you'll be able to combine multiple photos of a location and create more realistic camera moves in 3D space. But for now, this would be best for digital video creations as the quality tops out at 720p and 24fps (for that “cinematic” look, I presume).
—Related, Ina Fried brings us the bigger picture on generative video with Axios’ Video-making AI tools are headed into general use
—Bonus, Katelyn Chedraoui, at CNET has compiled Every New Feature Adobe Announced in Photoshop, Premiere Pro and More

Meta strikes multi-year AI deal with Reuters (Sara Fischer - Axios) - Meta recently announced that its chatbot has half-a-billion monthly active users. And while I'm suspicious of that number (I fear it's like saying anyone with a TV uses PBS), infusing that bot with a stream of facts from a quality news agency is a good thing. It’s certainly good for Reuters, which will benefit from the chatbot providing links to it’s content. It also reminds that we really need to create a public media news chatbot.

Universal Music Strikes Strategic Deal With “Ethical AI Music Company” Klay Vision (Georg Szalai - Hollywood Reporter) - With Suno and Udio making great strides in generative music this year, it's not surprising that the record labels would first protest and then quickly follow suit. Could this mean generative music free of legal entanglements? Could this raise the bar for cost-effective soundtracks for public media digital content? Keep in mind, we live in a world where social content can carry nearly whatever soundtrack you want and where your choice of music can even influence a platform algorithm's elevation of your content. Consumer expectations for use of quality music in content are not likely to get less advanced with time.
—And lest we forget, Google is dabbling in space as well: New generative AI tools open the doors of music creation

Lawsuit claims Character.AI is responsible for teen's suicide (Angela Yang - NBCNews) - This one is deeply troubling, but not surprising. There have been other instances of emotional distress from people who have developed emotional attachments to bots, only to have what are products changed by their creators. Media literacy has always been about knowing what is real and what is not. Now, that is taking on an entirely new urgency.

Everything You Need to Know About Apple Intelligence (Juli Clover - MacRumors) - For those with iPhones, earlier this week Apple started rolling out an update with iOS with the first features of their AI (Apple Intelligence). This falls into a category more akin to AI Agents than straight generative AI. As of this writing, I did the upgrade about 24 hours ago, and I'm not noting much difference in my daily usage. I'm sure there's some things I need to opt into (I shut Siri down in frustration years ago) but don't expect your mobile world to change overnight (for good or ill) with this update.

Biden orders agencies to harness advanced AI (Morgan Chalfant - Semafor) - A sequel, of sorts, to last October's AI Executive Order, though this time with a national security focus.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses Are The Top Selling Product In Many Ray-Ban Stores (David Heaney - UploadVR) - More signs of life from the mixed reality space. Always follow the money.
—At the other end of the immersive tech spectrum, Scott Hayden at Road to VR reports Apple Reportedly Rethinking XR Headset Approach Amid Reveal of Meta’s AR Glasses and that Apple May Halt Vision Pro Production by Year-End Amid Report of Sharply Reduced Output

How bad are video games for your grades? ($) (The Economist) - A provocative title is the entry into an article on how China has cracked down on young people's access to online video games each week. Not surprisingly, the data shows that if you replace study time with playtime (and the two are not linked) then academic performance will suffer.

And finally…

The 14 Best AI-Generated Fake Movie Trailers, Ranked (Jonathan H. Kantor - Looper) - Any finally, is there any scientific validity to this list? No. But AI-generated fake movie trailers are a good way of gauging the state of the art when it comes to generative video. Plus, they can be a lot of fun.

Have a creative, productive week!