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Tag: IIT Bombay

  • Eros Investments collaborates with IIT Bombay to develop AI-based script generating tool Kurosawa

    Eros Investments collaborates with IIT Bombay to develop AI-based script generating tool Kurosawa

    Mumbai: Global media, entertainment and technology portfolio of ventures Eros Investments has announced a strategic collaboration with IIT Bombay to design and develop an AI-based tool for automatic script generation.

    Named Kurosawa, after the celebrated Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, the software will assist film makers in developing the plot and script of movies by generating a full-length feature film script. IIT Bombay will also create a whitepaper on Kurosawa for academic and research purposes.

    The teams from IIT Bombay and Eros have been collaborating on Kurosawa for over a year. Kurosawa will help identify the right genre, output logline, and synopsis and deliver a potentially hit script that can be customized further as required. In the current phase, Kurosawa can generate multiple engaging plots and scenes basis single input. For example, it can create genre-specific movie plots, basic genre(s) and a short 2-3 sentence prompt. It can also create scenes in a standard screenplay format basis a brief description.

    Automatic Movie Script Generation is a subfield of Natural Language Generation (NLG). The machine can learn plot and scene generation from the pre-existing data with minimum human intervention.

    Eros Investments director Swaneet Singh said, ” This association between Eros Investments and IIT Bombay is an excellent example of the amalgamation of the left and right brain. Kurosawa is a pioneering and cutting-edge technology that will revolutionize the entertainment sector. The tool will enable scriptwriters to focus on creativity and quality while doing the groundwork for them. This innovation marks a new milestone for Eros Investments that will be used as a case study in the future.”

    IIT Bombay dean of research and development Prof. Milind Atrey, added, “Kurosawa will be a huge opportunity to transform the art of storytelling with proficiency and improve efficiency for content creators. We welcome collaboration with Eros investments, led by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya from IIT Bombay, to provide automation to the process of scripting in the entertainment industry. As the outcome of the research, IIT Bombay will also be jointly launching a white paper on Kurosawa that will be used for academic and research purposes, further supporting the upcoming generation looking to make a mark in the industry.”

    Kurosawa is based on the latest deep learning and natural language processing technologies. It is led by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, known for his artificial intelligence and machine learning expertise, and an internationally renowned research group. He is a professor in the computer science and engineering department at IIT Bombay and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering (2015) and Abdul Kalam National Fellow (2020). Prof. Bhattacharyya is supported in this project by the students from IIT Bombay who are a part of the curriculum.

  • Final phase STB seeding is 35% even as deadline nears

    NEW DELHI: Even as the country has set a deadline of 31 March this year for full digitisation of cable TV, a Parliamentary Committee has been told that only 35 per cent seeding of set-top boxes (P-IV) has been achieved in rural India though the Parliament was told last week that 66.79 per cent (P III & IV) seeding had been achieved in the last two phases minus Tamil Nadu.

    Admitting that digitisation in the first phase is total minus Chennai, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology which also examines issues relating to the information and broadcasting ministry has been told that digitisation has also not been done in one city – Coimbatore – of Phase II in view of court cases though the other 37 cities having more than one million population and spanning 14 states and one union territory had been covered.

    The committee recommended that the I and B Ministry follow up the issue of financial and technical viability in rural and remote areas, promote and increase share of iCAS (Indian Conditional Access System) to leverage ‘Make in India’ programme, popularise Doordarshan Free Dish in small town/cities/rural and remote areas, address the legitimate concerns of domestic STB producers and rigorously pursue interoperability of STB with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

    The committee therefore expressed the hope that the I and B Ministry will be able to meet the targets of cable TV digitisation as almost all the pending cases have now been dismissed and there is no stay in any case except in case of Chennai and Coimbatore.

    Cable TV Digitisation in Phase III and Phase IV areas was to be achieved by 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2016 respectively, now extended to 31 January 2017 and 31 March 2017.

    Interoperability: TRAI working with IIT Bombay

    It was told that technical interoperability, as envisaged in the existing Direct to Home Guidelines has so far not proved to be effective due to various techno-commercial issues. The TRAI has decided to collaborate on the issue of technical interoperability with the Department of Electrical Engineering of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B).

    To ensure commercial interoperability TRAI has notified tariff orders and this has been challenged by a couple of DTH operators in the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Arbitration Tribunal and the matter is sub judice.

    The Committee was given to understand that after the roll out of iCAS in January 2016, about 10 million STBs have been installed by multi-system operators out of which about 300,000 are with iCAS, which gives a market share of about 3%.