Warner Bros. Discovery is teaming up with Google Cloud to use a new AI-powered captioning tool to significantly reduce production time and costs.
The tool, which is powered by Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, will initially be applied to WBD’s unscripted programming. Warner noted that the workflow would be overseen by real people for quality assurance. The caption AI workflow is expected to reduce file creation time by up to 80% compared to manual captioning and reduce captioning costs by up to 50%.
“Providing viewers with high-quality captions is incredibly important to Warner Bros. Discovery,” Avi Saxena, chief technology officer of WBD’s direct to consumer division, said in a statement. “Working with Google Cloud to utilize Vertex AI within Warner Bros. Discovery’s caption AI workflow has not only helped to accelerate our captioning process, but also has improved our efficiency and speed, while reducing costs.”
“AI has the potential to transform a variety of processes across the media and entertainment industry that deliver real business impact,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian added. “With its captioning solution, Warner Bros. Discovery is seeing an incredible example of how AI agents can save organizations time and money.”
WBD and Google Cloud’s new partnership comes on the heels of an agreement between Lionsgate and Runway, which will create a new AI model based on the movie studio’s archive film and TV content and will be used for storyboarding and post-production.
At the Financial Times’ Business of Entertainment Summit last week, United Talent Agency CEO Jeremy Zimmer called the Lionsgate-Runway partnership “concerning for artists.” Some basic concerns from his clients include, “Is my work going to get stolen? Is my likeness going to get stolen? Is my job going to be replaced? Am I going to be replaced?”
“If I’m an artist and I’ve made a Lionsgate movie, now suddenly that Lionsgate movie is going to be used to help build out an LLM for an AI company, am I going to be compensated for that?” he questioned.
But Zimmer also sees an opportunity for AI to help creatives be “more efficient and thoughtful about the way we make shows and market shows and make movies and market movies,” which he said would be “really great for storytellers” within the right legal framework.
“I think there’s open-mindedness and thoughtful conversations taking place,” he conceded. “But how do we get there? Who gets there first, and whether the spirit of those conversations is truly open and honest and fair, we are not going to know for a bit.”
At the same conference, WME co-chair Richard Weitz praised California Gov. Gavin Newsom for recently signing two bills aimed at protecting performers’ likenesses from being replicated by AI, calling the guardrails the “best thing that can happen.”
“If you look at the estates of the deceased, whether it’s Elvis or whether it’s Marilyn Monroe, or any of the actors or persons that we’ve had, they’re going to be protected. They’re also going to be protected with their likeness and their voice,” Weitz said on Thursday. “There’s this Oprah Winfrey special I watched the other day on ABC that has all the titans of AI. And it is scary, of course, and they are admitting that it’s scary, but we have to embrace the change. We also have to make sure we’re protecting our clients.”
