ITU on Artificial Intelligence in Broadcasting

ITU has published a new report that lays out how Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be used during the process of making and distributing television and radio content.

The report discusses how AI is now being used to optimize workflows for broadcasting program-making, to improve audio and visual quality evaluation, to efficiently utilize the frequency spectrum in television and radio distribution, and recently, even to create new programs by mining archives, as well as automatically targeting content to specific audiences or individuals.

For example, AI is being used for extracting content from vast archives. Automatically localizing content for international distribution, and generating access services such as captioning, audio description, text to speech, and signing far faster and far more accurately than could be achieved in the past.

The report – Artificial Intelligence Systems for Programme Production and Exchange – reflects the work that ITU has been doing on these issues, profiting from the experiences of programme makers and broadcasters who are doing just that.

Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General, said: "ITU is collaborating with stakeholders to harness the power of AI to improve lives worldwide and seek solutions to the world's greatest challenges. This helps us to identify practical applications of AI that can accelerate progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which is what we are doing this week at the AI for Good Global Summit."

Mario Maniewicz, Director of ITU's Radiocommunication Bureau, added: "There is still an incredible amount of work needed to ensure that the use of AI in programme making and content distribution is for the benefit of the audiences. We also need to make sure that the systems employed interact with each other. This and other Reports and Recommendations from ITU help to achieve that."