5 ms·

All the incentives are there, not too surprising. What percentage of people will notice? How long until only a trained eye will recognize it?

owlninja 2y ago
Why not just grab a pic from the actual film?
- michael-online 2y ago
  If youtube is to be believed, thumbnails make a dramatic difference to first-glance engagement. A model trained to find great(by what metrics?) screenshots from the film sounds like a fun project.
  - tgdude 2y ago
    https://recosense.medium.com/how-netflix-uses-ai-and-ml-to-determine-which-thumbnails-they-use-d633aef84bd5 https://recosense.medium.com/how-netflix-uses-ai-and-ml-to-d... This reminded me of this article I read a few years back. I wonder if they still use the same method.
  - jsnell 2y ago
    Netflix has written about their approach to solving that problem: https://netflixtechblog.com/ava-the-art-and-science-of-image-discovery-at-netflix-a442f163af6 https://netflixtechblog.com/ava-the-art-and-science-of-image... https://netflixtechblog.com/artwork-personalization-c589f074ad76 https://netflixtechblog.com/artwork-personalization-c589f074...
    - abraham 2y ago
      Netflix's approach has also had criticisms https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/oct/20/netflix-film-black-viewers-personalised-marketing-target https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/oct/20/netflix-film-b...
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    I'm looking forward to classic movies with AI-generated thumbnails that take the main actor or actress and make them do the "Youtube Thumbnail Surprised Face". Imagine The Maltese Falcon or Citizen Kane but with thumbnails that look like [1]. 1: https://hard-drive.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/youtubers-1024x538.jpg https://hard-drive.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/youtubers-...
    - ASalazarMX 2y ago
      The first image you conjured in my mind was Indiana Jones holding the holy grial and doing a pog face.
- Drakim 2y ago
  This is the baffling part. Maybe it's like a "soft launch" thing to see if it works at all?
- floren 2y ago
  That would require paying a contractor for ~5 minutes of time to skip through the movie until they find a good scene, take the screenshot, trim it, and upload it. Ugh. We've already got all these GPUs over in AWS, just spin up an image generation model and prompt it "Make a thumbnail preview image for the film {{film.name}}", good enough.
- jccooper 2y ago
  That'd take a human with taste a terrifyingly large 5 minutes, whereas AI trash can be entirely programmatic, with maybe an intern picking the best of 4 in a couple seconds. Think of the savings, and with only a moderate impact on the reputation of your service.
- dangerwill 2y ago
  Good point. I wonder if Amazon is experimenting with this with the idea that they will be able to make more "eye grabbing" thumbnails with genAI as opposed to pure stills from the given film. The click through rate may be a key metric internally, and since prime video is an add-on to prime the risk of customers dropping the service over this is low (compared to if Netflix did this)
- eddieroger 2y ago
  Licensing fees. Why pay for individual images when you can just generate them and pay once for the tool.
legitster 2y ago
I mean, it's amazing how much we already put up with terrible Photoshops on movie covers and thumbnails. This is really just the next evolution.
gpm 2y ago
What percentage of people will notice the primary means of marketing the film? Almost all of them, surely. Maybe not consciously... but unconsciously certainly. Films are incredibly expensive products to produce, an average of $100 million dollars apparently [1]. Do the incentives really not align to pay for professional artists to create a high quality thumbnail? I doubt it. Hell, youtubers have figured out it's worth doing this on every video which cost and pull in 4-5 orders of magnitude less money. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/why-movies-cost-so-much-to-make.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/why-movies-...

owlninja 2y ago

Why not just grab a pic from the actual film?

michael-online 2y ago
If youtube is to be believed, thumbnails make a dramatic difference to first-glance engagement. A model trained to find great(by what metrics?) screenshots from the film sounds like a fun project.
- tgdude 2y ago
  https://recosense.medium.com/how-netflix-uses-ai-and-ml-to-determine-which-thumbnails-they-use-d633aef84bd5 https://recosense.medium.com/how-netflix-uses-ai-and-ml-to-d... This reminded me of this article I read a few years back. I wonder if they still use the same method.
- jsnell 2y ago
  Netflix has written about their approach to solving that problem: https://netflixtechblog.com/ava-the-art-and-science-of-image-discovery-at-netflix-a442f163af6 https://netflixtechblog.com/ava-the-art-and-science-of-image... https://netflixtechblog.com/artwork-personalization-c589f074ad76 https://netflixtechblog.com/artwork-personalization-c589f074...
  - abraham 2y ago
    Netflix's approach has also had criticisms https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/oct/20/netflix-film-black-viewers-personalised-marketing-target https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/oct/20/netflix-film-b...
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I'm looking forward to classic movies with AI-generated thumbnails that take the main actor or actress and make them do the "Youtube Thumbnail Surprised Face". Imagine The Maltese Falcon or Citizen Kane but with thumbnails that look like [1]. 1: https://hard-drive.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/youtubers-1024x538.jpg https://hard-drive.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/youtubers-...
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    The first image you conjured in my mind was Indiana Jones holding the holy grial and doing a pog face.
Drakim 2y ago
This is the baffling part. Maybe it's like a "soft launch" thing to see if it works at all?
floren 2y ago
That would require paying a contractor for ~5 minutes of time to skip through the movie until they find a good scene, take the screenshot, trim it, and upload it. Ugh. We've already got all these GPUs over in AWS, just spin up an image generation model and prompt it "Make a thumbnail preview image for the film {{film.name}}", good enough.
jccooper 2y ago
That'd take a human with taste a terrifyingly large 5 minutes, whereas AI trash can be entirely programmatic, with maybe an intern picking the best of 4 in a couple seconds. Think of the savings, and with only a moderate impact on the reputation of your service.
dangerwill 2y ago
Good point. I wonder if Amazon is experimenting with this with the idea that they will be able to make more "eye grabbing" thumbnails with genAI as opposed to pure stills from the given film. The click through rate may be a key metric internally, and since prime video is an add-on to prime the risk of customers dropping the service over this is low (compared to if Netflix did this)
eddieroger 2y ago
Licensing fees. Why pay for individual images when you can just generate them and pay once for the tool.

legitster 2y ago

I mean, it's amazing how much we already put up with terrible Photoshops on movie covers and thumbnails. This is really just the next evolution.

gpm 2y ago

What percentage of people will notice the primary means of marketing the film? Almost all of them, surely. Maybe not consciously... but unconsciously certainly. Films are incredibly expensive products to produce, an average of $100 million dollars apparently [1]. Do the incentives really not align to pay for professional artists to create a high quality thumbnail? I doubt it. Hell, youtubers have figured out it's worth doing this on every video which cost and pull in 4-5 orders of magnitude less money. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/why-movies-cost-so-much-to-make.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0611/why-movies-...