IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Program
The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) welcomed around 40,000 participants in Amsterdam between 13 and 16 September 2024. The show was an exciting opportunity to present our most recent technologies, developed as part of the EU-funded TRANSMIXR project. In collaboration with international media and technology partners, webLyzard technology presented two showcases in the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Program.
The program offers an agile, fast-track approach to spark and nurture innovation within the media industry. It aims to develop practical solutions that are easy to implement and tackle widespread challenges in the sector. The TRANSMIXR consortium made central contributions to the following initiatives:
IBC Accelerator: Evolution of the Control Room
This project was a collaboration between TRANSMIXR, ITN, BBC, and TV2 Denmark, with support from HSLU, TCD, TG4, TUS, and the University of Strathclyde. The aim was to streamline media production processes using extended reality (XR) technology and AI, allowing creative teams to realize their ideas and cooperate even without extensive technical knowledge.
Grace Dinan of the University of the Shannon, represented TRANSMIXR on the Innovation Stage. She spoke about how AI-driven solutions can streamline workflows in virtual control rooms that use the TRANSMIXR dashboard powered by webLyzard technology to source, analyze and visualize breaking news stories. The video below shows the TRANSMIXR XR control room, incorporating the webLyzard Dashboard and the Storypact Editor.
IBC Accelerator: Weapons in the Fight Against Disinformation
Proposed by BBC, CBS News and Paramount Global, the goals of this Accelerator project were to develop an industry-wide understanding of the challenges faced today by all media outlets in identifying disinformation. The developed solutions aim to help audiences identify trustworthy news, information and images. They also support news organizations in finding, verifying, and authenticating sources and tracing the provenance of news stories. webLyzard’s solution showcases how Generative AI and Ambient Search features can help organizations collaborate on detecting disinformation as they identify emerging stories, author new articles or debunk a recent claim.
The presentation included a first glimpse at our upcoming fact-checking browser extension. Our tool shows whether reputable fact-checking services have already evaluated the social media post or Web document users are browsing.
In addition, we used the insights gained from the program to expand our earlier work on political communication. webLyzard’s AI-powered US Election 2024 Web Monitor now includes the recent content feeds from reputable fact-checking services. Thus, dashboard users can immediately verify whether a certain claim has already been fact-checked. It also helps them can gain a better understanding of the type and extent of disinformation emerging during or after an event.
The video below shows how media professionals can use the TRANSMIXR toolkit to collaborate and share knowledge productively while eliminating disinformation.
Imagining the Newsroom of the Future
In addition to being featured in presentations on stage, the developed solutions for the “Newsroom of the Future” were on display at the European Broadcasting Union’s stand where visitors could try them out. Marie Hospital (Agende France-Press), Bryan Dunphy and Eoghan Hynes (both from the Technological University of the Shannon) presented many of our partners’ exciting solutions for news monitoring, video summarizing and 3D creation.
TRANSMIXR has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement No 101070109. Call: HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01-06, Innovation for Media, including eXtended Reality (IA).
