(Yicai Global) July 20 -- A new series of last year's TV hit The Rap of China has kicked off and with it comes the show's first female judge joining the likes of Kris Wu and MC Hotdog. The selection of Hong Kong singer G.E.M., real name Gloria Tang Tsz-Kei, has raised some eyebrows among critics due to the use of artificial intelligence in her selection, as well as her hip-hop credentials.

"G.E.M joining The Rap of China is a bit of an embarrassment as her previous image falls short in terms of rap elements," one music critic after learning of the singer's inclusion on the talent show's judging panel. Although the news has drawn widespread criticism from a host of music critics, the move was not unexpected. With G.E.M's involvement, this show hit a new peak in terms of viewing figures in its first week. More surprisingly, it was AI that played the key role in selecting G.E.M. for the position, rather than a team of directors or producers.

The concept of AI has been under the spotlight for the past two years. While traditionally it is startups and capital investment funds that have focused on the sector, the technology has now started to permeate the entertainment industry on all fronts, including games, film television, Dong Xiaolei, director at China Insights Consultancy told Yicai Global.

AI Comes to The Rap of China

The Rap of China is the first variety show to comprehensively use AI technology in the country, including casting, voice recognition and highlight recommendation.

AI analyzes data in three aspects through adopting intelligent matching technology when choosing the judge, Chen Wei, senior vice president of iQIYI, which produces the show.

The technology firstly judges the attraction to the celebrity among audience. As The Rap of China is an entertainment variety show, AI technology takes various market factors into account and calculates the matching score between G.E.M.'s fans and the audience of the show. Through the deduction of fans' hobbies and interests, the AI determined that although G.E.M. caters to a popular music market, a multitude of her fans also enjoy the show.

Secondly, the AI judged the compatibility of G.E.M. between herself and other judges, adopting a multidimensional analysis between current judge Wilber Pan and several female stars in terms of popularity, music type, image among fans, musical characteristics and public opinion. When combined with internet search data, the system found that G.E.M.'s level of compatibility with Pan was as high as 90 percent.

Lastly, the AI analyzed how attractive G.E.M. is among the fans of the show. Making full use of big data, the system looked at artists' popularity and their physical appearance to rate them. G.E.M was finally chosen after the AI decided she was both good at singing and also pleasing on the eye.

So far, the AI has been proven right thanks to a successful first show in terms of viewership of more 70 million and strong feedback online with over 200,000 comments left.

AI Brings Capital to Entertainment

Apart from, besides The Rap of China, a horde of other variety shows and TV dramas are using AI to help with casting as the technology becomes more and more prevalent in the sector.

Capital funds are often hesitant about backing the entertainment industry due to the high costs associated with it. The emergence of AI is expected to greatly improve the success rate of content and could lure more firms into using the technology.

"In accordance with users' behavior, facial expressions and voices, AI can precisely understand their state in real time so as to appropriately adjust the content," Dong said. "AI technology also helps content producer to learn about viewers' requests and preferences when introducing more attractive content."

AI in Movies

In terms of the movie industry, AI is used to conduct supporting analysis combined with big data, Chen Shaofeng, vice president of Peking University's Institute for Cultural Industries, told Yicai Global. For example, before a movie is released, AI and big data are used to analyze who will go to see the movie and estimate the approximate box office takings ahead of time.

AI is also employed to push related content to consumers who like the movie and is also combined with hardware to create robotics used in the sector. "AI will greatly change our entertainment-related lifestyles as well as the content industry", said Chen.

At present, the impact of AI technology on the entertainment content industry is still in its infancy, and it cannot completely replace human work for now in terms of analyzing the inertia behavior of users and big data by using algorithms.

AI is based on human algorithms and big data, said Dong, adding that there are more or less undesirable factors such as gender discrimination and racial discrimination in existing big data and information, which may lead to a potential bias of AI.

"The entertainment content industry needs to face not only the entertainment demands of the audience but also the responsibility of values guidance."

"AI technology can improve the quality of entertainment content and reduce the risk of content investment, but it also needs to guide values in algorithms. Artificial censorship is also indispensable," stated Chen, adding that only by controlling multiple links can the content risk be reduced as much as possible.

In fact, iQIYI has artificially guided the values of The Rap of China. "The program should reflect Chinese traditional culture and what is happening at present, while being combined with the art of rap at the same time," said the program director Che Che.

"Contestants this year come from a variety of backgrounds, including lawyers, high achievers, full-time moms, cooks, etc. Combining their careers and lives and incorporating better attitudes and values into their rap is a new feature of the program this year," he added.

Editor: William Clegg