Insys Video Technologies has added new capabilities to its over-the-top (OTT) video solutions to enable automated identification of celebrities and detection of inappropriate content in catchup TV programming and on-demand video libraries. Viewers can find clips featuring a particular celebrity and jump to the exact point in the show where that person appears, while nudity and violence can be automatically flagged and blurred.
The huge volume of available OTT content creates content discovery challenges for both audiences and providers. Similarly, large volumes of content make it difficult for operators to ensure that all content meets their brand's standards and regulatory restrictions for sensitive material. Leveraging API integration with Amazon Rekognition, a solution from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the new features in Insys' OTT platform are intended to solve both problems. Content added to the operator's library is automatically analyzed for recognizable people and sensitive content. Amazon Rekognition is a deep learning-powered video analysis service that can identify objects, people, text, scenes, and activities as well as inappropriate content. The scalable service performs real-time video analysis using machine learning models that are trained to detect thousands of objects and activities accurately, and to extract motion-based context from video.
Insys' front-end user experiences utilize the results of the analysis to allow viewers to search for shows or news clips that include particular celebrities or politicians. A timeline then allows them to jump directly to the specific moments at which those people appear, while overlays in the Insys video player show the names of recognized individuals during playback. The Insys player window also displays markers on the program timeline to indicate scenes with nudity or violence, with the operator-controlled option to automatically blur the video during playback to obscure the offending content.
"Our new inappropriate content detection and blurring capabilities help operators automatically ensure content meets the expectations of their viewers and their brand," said Insys CEO Krzysztof Bartkowski. "They also further expand our toolset for ensuring safe viewing for children, which we consider an important part of our corporate responsibility as a vendor. Meanwhile, the ability to identify celebrities and politicians within the video enhances content discoverability for service providers' audiences, letting viewers spend less time finding relevant content and more time watching it."