If you had been told a few years ago that a program would be capable of changing the face of any person for that of another on video, you might not have believed it. Or yes, but stating that you would quickly realize that this is computer generated. Today that happens, but not everyone is able to really identify when this happens. Well now, Tencent goes a step further and announces that will insert additional advertising into your videos via AI. Yes, in those that you already have on your platform without the need to re-record anything.
Tencent and the use of AI to insert advertising on demand
If there is a sector that is always up to date in terms of technology and how to take advantage of it, it is advertising. Being more effective and finding a way to reach more users is their main objective. There is little to say about how it is able to do it through the web, but when it comes to video, things changed. Normally, beyond the superimposed ads or those that break the reproduction of what you are seeing on platforms like YouTube or similar; If you recorded content with a product placement ad, it would stay that way forever.
Well now, through the Mirriad technology, the Chinese giant Tencent has announced that through the use of artificial intelligence it will introduce advertising into its videos. For this, this technology analyze the scenes where you want to introduce a product, poster, etc., and by means of an algorithm it locates the best location and generates everything necessary for it to be perfectly integrated. So much so that for most it will be very difficult to identify what is real and what is false.
Logically, this is achieved because, as you can see in the demo video at least, the final quality plays a bit with chromatic aberrations, blurs and slight distortions so that what is a fake product is not noticeable from the real one. Even so, it is a matter of time before everything improves so that with higher quality any advertising product that could be inserted remains imperceptible.
With nearly 100 million subscribers, for Tencent this can be a very profitable business. Imagine that you can change the advertisers for the same video as many times as you want. One day you might see a glass of soda from a popular fast food chain and another from its direct competition. Here it is only a matter of who pays to advertise and that's it.
As a user, if it is used respectfully and with a head, it seems great to me. The problem is that it is not done like this, something that would be the most normal thing that ends up happening. Although it will be a matter of time to see what finally happens.
What is clear is that the advertising business will continue advancing to optimize its impact. Movistar+ has also announced that it has the enough technology to prevent you and your neighbor from seeing the same ads if necessary. What is striking here is that it is done through linear Seoul and, although there are only three different ad broadcasts for a single program, it is still curious. That said, get used to how advertisers and agencies will send you their advertising.