Cineverse unveils AI-powered search and recommendation platform cineSearch

Streaming technology and entertainment outfit Cineverse is to launch what it describes as a new AI-powered movie search platform, cineSearch.

The public beta of cineSearch will be available within the Cineverse streaming platform in the spring before being made more widely available in partnership with OEM and third-party streaming platform partners.

The cineSearch service was developed by Cineverse using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Search. The underlying core cineSearch technology was built as an adaptive layer on top of the PaLM 2 Large Language Model (LLM) with the intent to craft a chatbot specifically tuned for feature film and television entertainment, which cineSearch will deliver a conversational experience for those seeking advice on what films to watch.

As part of this new service, Cineverse is introducing what it calls a new “artificial intelligence-based video advisor” that will be known simply as “Ava.”

The company, which began its history as a digital cinema specialist before branching out into streaming, says that the search feature will use the first proprietary movie industry-specific AI model tuned with an extensive set of metadata, including standard metadata and computer vision-based enriched, contextual metadata (such as weather or setting), across more than 100,000 Hollywood movies and television shows. cineSearch says it will offer a single unified search engine with support for search dimensions such as theme, tone, mood, setting, music score, plot and micro-genre.

The cineSearch service will also use scene-specific metadata and a viewer’s previous viewing history as well as their location, the current date, local weather conditions, and other factors to determine titles to recommend.

Cineverse says that if a movie is not available within its own catalogue, Ava will recommend films available elsewhere and provide direct links to access films available across other streaming services.

“Effective search and discovery is currently the most pressing problem for users of streaming services today. We first developed cineSearch as an answer to our own problem. Using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, we now have the ability to expand this feature well beyond our initial expectations. We feel this is a great example of leveraging the power of AI to not only create better user experiences, but to also help aid in the discovery of great films that fans may not have otherwise found,” said Tony Huidor, chief technology officer and chief operating officer of Cineverse.

“Generative AI has the potential to fundamentally transform the media industry, fueling a new era of cloud-enabled capabilities that can significantly improve the consumer experience. By leveraging Google Cloud’s leading gen AI capabilities, cineSearch can further personalize and streamline the user experience, providing viewers a vastly improved way to discover new content, with relevant recommendations  for movies and television shows at their fingertips,” said Anil Jain, global managing director of strategic consumer industries at Google Cloud.