How Advancements in Artificial Intelligence Are Impacting Interactive Streaming
Scientists have been studying artificial intelligence and its applications for decades, but today the term “AI” is used more frequently than ever. As companies around the world begin to utilize AI across a variety of industries, from social media and gaming to healthcare and transportation, it will play an increasingly important role in our lives and the way we interact with others—especially through live video features such as interactive streaming.
What is AI?
Before we can explore AI’s impact on interactive streaming, it’s important to know what AI actually is.
Put simply, AI refers to the process of incorporating human intelligence to machines, especially computer systems. AI is often used interchangeably with other terms such as “machine learning” or “deep learning,” but they’re not the same. Machine Learning (ML) is the training process for machines so that they can learn how to make decisions, while deep learning (DL) is a subset of ML. DL algorithms work similarly to the human brain in that when they receive new information, they compare it to a known item to make sense of it.
How AI Can Improve Interactive Streaming?
Live video is expected to make up 17 percent of all video traffic by 2020. While the growing popularity of live engagement features is giving companies and individuals alike more opportunities to interact with each other, the real-time nature of live video also presents its fair share of issues—both ethical and tech-related.
As more videos are recorded and broadcasted live, AI will play an increasingly crucial role in monitoring, improving, and personalizing interactive streams.
Detecting Harmful Content
Live communications-enabled apps give people the ability to spend time with friends, meet new people, and learn about cultures they might not have the opportunity to experience otherwise. However, a few bad apples can ruin the experience for others by live streaming inappropriate content or writing hurtful comments. While these videos are typically flagged within minutes, hundreds of people may see them before they are removed.
That’s why Facebook and other platforms are employing AI to remove and even prevent harmful content before it’s even posted. Image analysis techniques such as image classification and object detection are used to categorize and detect specific images, while images segmentation puts those images into context. The more text and images the machine receives, the better it gets at detecting potentially harmful content.
Improving Interactive Streaming Technology
AI isn’t just making the interactive streaming space safer; it’s pushing video and voice quality to new heights.
YouTube and Netflix both utilize ML to dynamically optimize the encoding parameters for every video on their platforms. In addition to improving the quality of experience (QoE) for their users, ML reduces the number of bits required for the same quality and reduces the overall costs because less bandwidth is required.
To provide our customers around the world with high-quality interactive streaming experiences, Agora uses ML in a variety of ways. Software-Defined Real-Time Network™ (SD-RTN™), Agora’s proprietary network, uses ML to dynamically manage the routing of voice and video to overcome severe packet loss incidents and provide uninterrupted streaming. Agora Super Resolution, a new feature recently announced at the AllThingsRTC conference, leverages the computing power of ML and AI algorithms on devices to render more clarity and sharpness during interactive streams. Super Resolution allows for lower bandwidth allocation during streams, which ensures that users in troubled network environments or emerging markets experience the best live voice and video possible.
Personalizing the User Experience
From the Snapchat-inspired filters across many social media apps to the voice changing effects that bring mobile games to life, AI is powering many of the top and emerging platforms and applications.
However, interactive features aren’t limited to social media and gaming. Enterprises across a variety of industries can use AI-powered engagement features to create more interactive live streaming experiences, whether they’re communicating with their customers or with their internal teams.
Agora offers over 600 different AR stickers and filters—all of which can be customized for your application or platform. Customers can also take advantage of live voice features, such as 3D spatial audio, active speaker detection, and voice effects including sound mixing and sound reverb to make live streams and video calling more fun and engaging.
What’s Next for AI in Interactive Streaming?
As the interactive streaming space continues to grow and evolve, AI will continue to have a major impact on the space, as well as the many other industries and verticals it is transforming. In the future we can expect even smarter, more engaging, immersive live streaming experiences powered by AI.
Want to incorporate interactive streaming or real-time engagement features in your app or platform? Talk to our team.