Machine-Generated Multimedia Content

In this paper we describe an automated system, and its attendant set of techniques and tools, that is able to generate novel multimedia experiences. Using existing online sources, external textual and multimedia repositories, and user preferences, the system builds a customized audio/visual experience for the user. We discuss one application in detail: News at Seven, an automatically generated, personalized news show. Beginning with a set of user preferences, the system is able to find relevant text, process that text, and supplement it with images, video, and blogger responses. The final output of the system is an online Flash presentation that uses animated avatars with generated speech and is modeled after traditional nightly news broadcast. We see this work as the beginning of an overall approach to machine-generated content.