#DrumTV: Looklive founder unveils new video tool allowing users to buy any product they see on screen
Developers behind a new online video tool which lets users locate any product they see on screen in an online store, used artificial intelligence to develop the product, according to co-founder and chief executive of Looklive Chris Archer.
Speaking to The Drum at entertainment and content festival Mipcom in Cannes, Archer explained that while the concept of the tool isn’t new, the complexities behind developing such a product have up until now prevented companies bringing the idea to fruition.
Archer unveiled the product at Cannes after two years’ of development by a team in Amsterdam.
He told The Drum: “Nobody’s done this before because it’s incredibly complicated to index every product without the support of the studio’s production teams or networks.
“The idea’s not new, it’s something that’s been talked about within the industry many times over, it’s just with the size of production teams, networks, producers, costumer designers and the complexity of the industry it’s hard to get through that entire value chain to get that costume information from the stylise to the network.
“And then it’s a very complicated back end to manage all of the TV shows, all of the character, all of the brands and the merchants, offering fresh links. So we’ve spent two years with our artificial intelligence team in Amsterdam building the back end of this product, so finally two years after all this development we can fulfil on the promise of identifying every product that’s in the scene without the support of the producers, the networks or the costume designers.”
Also at Mipcom, Twitter’s Fred Graver told The Drum of the growing importance of TV to the social network.