UK’s creative production edge to be sharpened by nine AI pioneers

Nine pioneering British startups will join Digital Catapult and industry supporters including the BBC and Amazon Web Services (AWS), to develop and bring to market solutions set to drive innovation in the country’s creative industries. Each team will be awarded £50,000 to develop a prototype using artificial intelligence (AI) to optimise, enhance and augment creative production, and address various challenges that will grow the UK’s creative economy. 

Building on the success of the first MyWorld accelerator programme, delivered by Digital Catapult in collaboration with NVIDIA, this next phase of activity will help unlock opportunities for industrial growth and investment. This will be achieved by exploring how AI can improve creative operations, content delivery, and enrich the audience experience. 

The world’s leading public service broadcaster, the BBC, will collaborate with Fictioneers, Black Goblin and The Gentleman Octopus to improve its audio output and audience engagement. Fictioneers will develop an AI powered creative assistant that will enable teams to augment their development process, using the BBC Archives to explore interactive audio experiences, and address technical and conceptual challenges in production. By providing a prototyping tool for interactive podcasts, the solution will not only deepen audience engagement but also enable the BBC to explore new audio storytelling formats, enhancing creative content delivery.

The Gentleman Octopus will create an AI-driven system using data from XR headsets to generate real-time, interactive visualisations of audio for more personalised music show experiences, allowing the BBC to deliver more immersive content to its audience. Black Goblin’s Thol, an AI-driven sound design suite, will aim to optimise sound design by automating the generation of high-quality sound effects from visual content, enabling the BBC’s audio engineers to create more diverse listening experiences too. 

Cloud service provider, AWS, will provide guidance to Nulight Studio, Noods Radio, Force of Habit and SuperScout to develop pioneering new production solutions. Nulight Studio will use generative AI for video and audio production, revolutionising workflows in the film, television, and media sectors by allowing creative professionals to focus more on innovation and creativity. Superscout’s iPhone app will use AI to improve operations, streamlining location research and organisation for creative productions, turning an often time-consuming process into a seamless, automated workflow.         

Noods Radio will look to develop a tool to enrich user engagement features including personalising recommendations for content and introducing an interactive chatbot to automate routine tasks. Force of Habit’s IMPRESS Insights will provide an AI-enabled tool for video game developers to track and react to player experiences in real-time, will enhance marketing, production, quality assurance, and post-release support. This will help AWS to meet growing demand for more personalised content services from its customers. 

Bristol-based Gritty Talent will develop a solution to improve engagement, retention, and progression of talent in the creative sector. Weaving Change aims to democratise fashion by developing an Outfit Recommendation Algorithm that uses AI to suggest personalised outfits from users’ existing wardrobes based on style preferences and occasions. Its solution will help optimise the outfit selection process, reduce the reliance on fast fashion, and foster creativity and sustainability in the fashion industry. 

MyWorld is led by the University of Bristol and funded by the UKRI Strength in Places fund, and is designed to the West of England’s position as a global centre of creative technology innovation. This new accelerator programme is delivered by Digital Catapult and provides each startup with funding, as well as access to technological support, investment readiness advice, and tailored workshops, culminating in a final showcase event in Bristol later this year. 

Alan Archer-Boyd, Lead Engineer (Audio R&D) at the BBC, said: “BBC R&D is pleased to support this MyWorld Challenge. The BBC relies on a vibrant and innovative creative industry across the UK, and Bristol and the West of England is an important part of the industry. This challenge will be of great benefit to the region, and I look forward to working closely with the successful challenge entrants.”

Commenting on their solution, Matthew Hawn, CEO of Fictioneers, said: “Generative AI has the potential to be far more than a tool for generating gigabytes of anodyne content. Our prototype demonstrates how AI can become a bicycle for creative minds, helping them explore existing media archives, spark new ideas, and accelerate the development of compelling new formats. We’re not replacing storytellers, we’re giving them superpowers.”

Sarah Addezio, Senior Innovation Partner at Digital Catapult, said: “The UK’s creative industries are a critical enabler of employment, business growth, and entertainment across the country. Supporting collaboration through the MyWorld programme between large organisations and startups has never been more important, as the sector tests and develops new trustworthy AI solutions. These solutions offer opportunities for businesses to utilise AI to improve operations, transform production processes, and solve inefficiencies, all while ensuring responsible and ethical considerations are taken into account. I’d like to congratulate the participating companies on their success in joining the programme.”

Participating companies:

• Gritty Talent: Gritty Talent is an impact-driven talent and technology company, delivering meaningful representation and inclusion in the UK’s creative, cultural and digital sectors. 
• Fictioneers: Fictioneers is a product within AKQA’s Potato studio in Bristol. It’s cloud-based platform for creative technologists and narrative designers who want to author, collaborate and operate personalised digital experiences that blur the physical and virtual worlds. 
• SuperScout: SuperScout.ai was founded in January 2024 as a workflow and data management app for location professionals in film and TV. SuperScout is a wider solution that will link in with the main website, and reduce day to day admin when our users are on the road. 
• Noods Radio: Noods Radio is Bristol’s premiere underground radio station showcasing the misfits, dancers, collectors and selectors from across the globe. In addition to daily broadcasts we curate international festival stages, standalone events, innovative projects and play an essential part in Bristol and the global music culture. 
• Black Goblin: Black Goblin is an audio design and technology company on a quest to transform the way creatives work with sound. Currently, Black Goblin is developing Thol, an all-inclusive collaboration platform that uses Machine Learning to allow content creators to design sound alongside audio professionals.
• Gentleman Octopus:  The Gentleman Octopus launched ‘Introspect’ which focuses on the intersection between the audience and the performance of an XR music show, using AI to facilitate more personal experiences. It will pass sensor data from XR headsets worn by an audience, to a classifying AI model in order to create responsive and generative visualisations of audio in real time.
• Force of Habit: Force Of Habit is an independent games studio based in Bristol, which launched IMPRESS, a marketing and PR toolkit to help the independent games industry with all things publishing and audience operations, including influencer monitoring, marketing analytics, press kits and more.
• Weaving Change: Weaving Change Limited was established with the aim to reduce overconsumption in the fashion industry. By developing Swerv, a gamified fashion app, Weaving Change aims to help to change the attitudes people have towards their own clothes and how they shop for new ones.
• Nulight Studios: Nulight Studios is a leading UK provider of motion picture film scanning, restoration and digital remastering services to the broadcast and film distribution markets.