3 ms·

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.

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.