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At a recent live event in Los Angeles covering Film & TV Operations in the Age of AI, Molten Cloud introduced an exciting development in the field of data management: an AI-enabled rights management system. Central to this breakthrough is a new concept called ETL+H, as explained by Molten Cloud's Head of Product, Ethan Shvartzman.
To understand the significance of ETL+H, it’s helpful to start with the traditional ETL process. ETL stands for Extract, Transform, Load - a data integration approach that consolidates data from various sources into a unified format. This method is applicable across data management in all industries. In the world of film distribution a few premiere examples of ETL might be the process of calculating royalties, or extracting rights from contracts, so that a sales team can begin to sell a newly acquired film.
Here’s how ETL may be used to frame rights data ingestion for a new title:
Relevant data must be extracted from a rights-in contract. This involves parsing through tables, charts, and detailed clauses to find specific information about rights.
Next, the extracted data is transformed. Legal language must be translated into a concise breakdown of rights, which might include specifications around territory, language, streaming types, exclusivity, and other critical factors.
Finally, the transformed data is loaded into the system. This involves setting up the data in a way that’s meaningful and actionable for sales teams to reference, filter, and search. This might involve inputting the data into fields of a rights management tool or organizing it into columns and rows in a rights spreadsheet.
The ETL process for rights is straightforward enough - tedious, but manageable for a single film. However, as libraries grow, so, too, does the volume of data needing to be managed. Soon a spreadsheet becomes untenable - rights data may span several documents, making it difficult to define the specifics of your avails. Perhaps the same spreadsheet has been in use for several years - now it’s filled with years old data, and years worth of potential for accidental deletion or other missteps which can affect the data’s accuracy, and carry major legal ramifications. Not to mention with a growing team, collaboration is difficult, often resulting in several versions of the same document.
In response to these challenges, cloud-based rights management systems have cropped up - improving search capabilities and providing one live source of truth accessible to the whole team. However, the initial data entry and ongoing data management can belabor-intensive tasks, especially during the initial onboarding of extensive data into a new system. This is where ETL+H comes into play, offering a more efficient and accurate solution by combining the strengths of AI and human oversight.
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ETL+H represents an evolution in data management, combining the strengths of AI with the critical oversight of human expertise. The “H” in ETL+H stands for the human element, which ensures that while AI performs the heavy lifting in data extraction and transformation, human review and validation add a necessary layer of accuracy and quality control.
AI’s advanced pattern recognition capabilities enable it to extract and organize data efficiently. As part of his recent live talk, Ethan Shvartsman demonstrated how Molten Cloud’s AI could ingest a contract and extract crucial data points - such as titles, start and end dates, licenses, territories, and languages - within minutes. The human component then reviews this data, ensuring its accuracy before it is fully integrated into the system.
A key aspect of this innovation is the robust infrastructure developed by Molten Cloud, which supports comprehensive rights, royalties, and content management. This platform is designed to handle deeply interconnected data, enabling seamless operations and maintaining data integrity and accuracy.
Looking ahead, ETL+H could significantly impact how data management is conducted across various industries, especially in media and entertainment. The combination of AI and human expertise offers a model where data management processes become more intuitive and efficient. For instance, users might eventually be able to manage their rights data as effortlessly as conducting a simple search query.
The shift from Pay TV to streaming, driven by changing consumer preferences, underscores the growing need for optimized rights management. Efficient data management is crucial for media companies to remain competitive and profitable. Early adopters, like The CW, have already started to experience the benefits of this new approach, streamlining their data onboarding processes and reducing resource expenditures.
For professionals in the field of data management, ETL+H represents a significant step forward. It offers a way to handle increasing volumes and complexities of data with greater efficiency and accuracy. As this technology continues to develop, it promises to set new standards in the industry, enabling companies to better manage, distribute, and monetize their content.
The integration of AI into traditional ETL processes, augmented by human oversight, provides a promising path for the future of data management. Molten Cloud’s ETL+H approach exemplifies how technology can be harnessed to improve operational efficiency and accuracy, paving the way for more innovative and effective data management solutions.