ITV partners with AI-Media to improve captioning for regional news.
- The collaboration focuses on AI-powered captioning technology, enhancing ITV’s broadcast network.
- The move to automation significantly improves accessibility and operational efficiency.
- Automated workflows reduce staffing requirements, offering cost and resource efficiencies.
- The initiative underscores ITV’s commitment to innovation and accessibility enhancements.
ITV has embarked on a pioneering partnership with AI-Media, a global leader in AI-driven captioning and translation services, to enhance captioning for regional news. This strategic move is expected to significantly benefit regional news viewers, owing to its focus on harnessing state-of-the-art technology to elevate accessibility and operational efficacies.
The partnership’s core revolves around the utilisation of AI-Media’s LEXI live automatic captioning solution, which integrates into ITV’s sophisticated infrastructure. The seamless integration is tailored to meet ITV’s diverse requirements, including 18 regional news variants, and is supported by AI Media’s SDI Encoder Pro Cards delivering captions as VANC embedded data.
Traditionally reliant on manual workflows necessitating substantial staffing, ITV’s transition to automation via AI-Media’s LEXI solution promises transformative changes. It will considerably reduce resource allocation towards staffing and operational processes, thereby offering substantial cost savings and improving the quality of service with more reliable captioning and decreased latency.
The implementation of automated workflows has been conducted without disruption to ITV’s existing playout solutions. This flexibility inherent in the new technology architecture ensures a smooth transition, empowering ITV to escalate the volume of regional news captions and thereby markedly enhancing viewer accessibility.
David Padmore, ITV’s director of accessibility, articulated the corporation’s pursuit of innovative solutions to optimise service delivery to its diverse audience. The partnership with AI-Media enables the deployment of cutting-edge AI to streamline captioning workflows, upholding high standards of accuracy and reliability.
ITV’s captioning team remains pivotal, focusing on the development of bespoke topic models to ensure captions retain the highest degree of relevance and accuracy. John Peck of AI-Media underscored the significance of their robust infrastructure, adept at deployment in complex broadcast settings, affirming their role in supporting ITV’s position as a leader within the European access services milieu.
This partnership between ITV and AI-Media represents a substantial advancement in accessible broadcasting, demonstrating ITV’s ongoing commitment to technological innovation and viewer engagement.
