The film and television industry, being risk-averse due to high production costs, has shown interest in using machine learning to predict audience responses to projects.
Previous ML methods have traditionally focused on successfully completed projects, leading to challenges in predicting success for new shows or movies with limited available data.
A new study by Comcast Technology AI and George Washington University proposes using language models to predict movie hits based on metadata before release.
The study constructed a dataset from unreleased movie metadata and evaluated models such as BERT V4 and Llama 3.3 for predicting popularity based on structured metadata.
The models were tested on the ability to predict the most popular titles accurately, with Llama 3.1 (405B) showing the best performance.
The research highlights the potential of language models to enhance recommendation systems, especially during the cold-start phase when limited data is available.
Using complex prompts and rich metadata like cast awards improved the models' predictive accuracy, especially in larger models like Llama 3.1 (405B).
LLMs, despite their potential, cannot entirely replace historical data for predicting future successes in the rapidly evolving movie and TV industry.
Thoughtful utilization of LLMs could aid in strengthening recommendation systems and provide valuable insights across various predictive methods, especially during the initial phases of content release.
The study's findings suggest that LLMs have the potential to be valuable tools in forecasting audience interest in movies and TV shows, offering early insights to production teams and potentially reducing reliance on retrospective metrics.
This research showcases the application of AI in predicting blockbuster movies using language models, offering a glimpse into the potential of leveraging AI for decision-making in the entertainment industry.