IBM Uses A.I. Computer to Create Latest 'Morgan' Trailer

The upcoming Luke Scott directed horror thriller Morgan is a story about a confused and deadly A.I., so it stands to reason that they would get IBM's impressive Watson computer system to help out with the trailer.

This is how the machine takeover starts...

Okay, the tinfoil hat has been removed, sorry about that. Moving on from conspiracy theories, John Smith, who works with IBM Research and Machine Vision, spoke about how the idea came about.

"Fox approached IBM and they said well we have this movie coming out, it's called Morgan, and it's an A.I. horror thriller, and then what Fox asked was could Watson analyze the movie and generate a trailer automatically, so we thought let's send Watson to film school."

The engineers at IBM trained Watson to recognize several key factors, starting with a visual analysis of the film. The scenes from the movie were keyed with different emotions and labels, such as frightening or sad (via ASmarterPlanet).

"Watson was able to model the scenes visually to determine was the scene scary, "said Smith. "Was it a tender moment, was there sadness or happiness.

After that, it was put through an audio analysis so that Watson could interpret the tone of voice and the accompanying score. Finally, an analysis of scene composition was done, so that Watson could understand locations and shots.

Even with all that information, it still comes down to the human element, something Scott will explore in Morgan.

"As human beings, we're very quick to judge the mood of an individual. Possibly, an A.I., over time might be able to develop those same instincts. I don't think A.I. has any value until it does start to understand and calibrate those emotions for itself.

You can watch Watson's handiwork in the trailer above, and you can catch Morgan in theaters on September 2nd.