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Vue CEO Tim Richards has shared insights into an artificial intelligence model the company has used for close to a decade and said there may be licensing opportunities in light of interest from other exhibitors.
Speaking on a panel about AI at the Financial Times’s Business of Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday, Richards said its AI model has helped the company punch above its weight in the marketplace and target audiences for whom English is not their first language.
Close to 10 years ago Richards and his executive team engaged a group in San Francisco that builds AI models for hedge funds and chose one that they felt could best serve Vue after looking at more than 50 products in beta testing.
Vue input more than 10 years of “incredibly granular-level” data into “an incredibly sophisticated” model, which analyses among other things the difference in concession stand spend between family and adult film customers.
The executive added, “We’re now looking very seriously at setting up a separate vehicle to license the model out. We’ve had a lot of interest from other exhibitors and players globally… The product itself is non-regional-specific, it’s an engine we’ve built ourselves.”
Vue started to see a return on investment six or seven years ago. “[AI] has allowed us to play 50% more movies than our competitors,” Richards said. ”It’s allowed us to play 46% of all the movies we show in foreign language. We know our customers across Europe better than anyone, we’re on the frontline.”
He continued, “In Europe we are not the largest cinema operator but by box office and attendance, we are. We’ve overdelivered. In the UK we are currently number one by box office and attendance, but not by the number of cinemas. You can see the impact AI has had by allowing us to play more movies to more people.”
The executive said Vue set up a distribution company to find in particular non-English-language films across Europe. “AI has allowed us to tailor specific films for specific audiences,” he said, referencing Asian audiences in Inverness, Scotland, and the Turkish community in London.
Noting Vue’s 22% occupancy rate, Richards said, “We flip that and see a 78% to 80% opportunity. AI is helping us fill those screens… [It’s] allowing us to programme out screens in the best way we possibly can.”
With regard to content creation, the executive said: “I don’t think we’re going to see certainly in the foreseeable future AI replacing human creativity. Humans’ ability to create new and original stories always amazes me… it is there and will continue to be there.”
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