Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming ubiquitous. We learn of stunning innovations due to AI, machine learning, augmented reality every day. Thus, it is only a matter of time before these extraordinary developments affect the world of storytelling too. In fact, the process has already started.
Are you ready to be told new stories by robots? When do you think that could happen? For many, this idea is at the same time fascinating and troubling. When debating this issue at a recent Milan Digital Week conference, some issues kept popping up: How can machines create a meaningful story? Can they really involve us emotionally? Can stories based on algorithms be original? In general, there were more sceptics than believers. But in this area, like in many others, things are changing fast.
How fast? Here are some examples of what is happening today at the crossroads of storytelling and AI.
WATSON
A leading company that is already investing significantly in this field is IBM. Nancy Pearson, Vice President Marketing IBM Cognitive Business, has an answer to some of the questions above. In a video dated October 2016 she explains that IBM’s Watson, a super computer working with artificial intelligence, has already partnered with Fox to build the most effective movie trailer.
Watson is able to do sentiment analysis and emotion analytics and then curate irresistible trailers. No human could match the amount of text and visual data that Watson can go through to do its job – 800 million documents every 5 seconds. The result? An incredible technology that “enhances our ability to take storytelling to the next level”. For instance, providing human directors with fresh ideas on how to develop trailers, new plots or just another series.
ALEXA
In 2017 Amazon launched the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 million university challenge to advance human-computer interaction. Eighteen computer science student teams worldwide competed to create socialbots that can “converse coherently and engagingly with humans on a range of current events and popular topics such as entertainment, sports, politics, technology, and fashion”.
Three teams went into the finals and succeeded in creating socialbots so skilled in Conversational AI that they surprised and delighted the experts tasked with interacting with them. Clearly, this contest was not about storytelling. But, if socialbots exist that can converse freely and interestingly on a number of topics, it means that AI is already very close to get the real sense of narratives and contribute to them.
MIT
The MIT Media Lab recently worked on the potential for machine–human collaboration in video storytelling. Their scientists tried to see if machines can identify common emotional arcs in video stories and predict how audiences might respond. The subject of the emotional arc is well-known among moviemakers and storytellers. Every good story goes from an ordinary world where the heroes struggle through difficult times to subsequent stages in which they fight their battle, triumph over hardship, and win the prize of their daring action. The emotional arc is what makes a movie compelling and involves the audience, but is not so easy to handle. Can machines help do it better?
The outcome of this research is definitely encouraging. After having done enough video analyses, computers can actually predict how a story will be received. This implies that we could soon see a significant change in the way movie stories are created. More and more creative people will work alongside machines, using AI capabilities to improve their stories and intensify their emotional appeal.
THE FUTURE OF STORYTELLING
In this context, it’s not surprising that a website called Future of Storytelling already exists. It is the platform of a passionate community of innovators, storytellers, technologists, marketers, who are exploring how storytelling is evolving in the digital age.
Clearly, the purpose of sites like that is not to prepare a future in which human storytellers are made irrelevant by machines. In fact, in this community participants can learn how to harness new media to tell their stories more effectively. According to Charlie Melcher, Future of Storytelling founder and director, today the tools to create stories are simply exploding and storytellers can take great advantage of that.
Experts working with AI say that the time when robots will actually be able to tell us stories (almost) independently is still 5 to 10 years away. That doesn’t mean that their stories will be good. So, for the foreseeable future, it is very likely that the best stories will come from open and clever interactions between machines and people. Anyway, on this evolving issue – stay tuned.