Ceretai develops AI software and services to help the media and entertainment industries improve diversity and equality in TV programs, movies and other media content.
In the Western world we consume up to 10 hours of media every day - news, Netflix, social media, you name it. Through this media we are shown a biased image of the world - for example, only 30% of speaking roles in cinema movies globally are given to women, and only 1% of characters in movies have functional limitations. This of course affects our view of the world, teaching us biases and contributing to an unsustainable world of discrimination and segregation.
At the same time, national and international governmental bodies in the media industry are focusing very hard on exactly these issues. Just like in other industries, authorities like the European Broadcasting Union and national public service regulators are looking at the UN sustainability goals and trying to find ways to increased gender equality (goal no. 5) and decreased inequalitites (goal no. 10).
Research shows that 80% of movie and TV audiences want to change the state of diversity in media and entertainment. "Newcomers" like Netflix continue to steal audiences with norm-breaking series showing a different picture of the world - one that includes a diversity of stories and people.
At Ceretai we have made it our mission to support the media industry in creating more diversity in their content. We have built a SaaS solution, the Diversity Dashboard, that automatically analyses any given media file for gender and age representation, and we continue to develop it to cover more grounds for discrimination. We also provide services for creating awareness and fostering change within European media organisations, for example workshops and reports.
The idea that became Ceretai was sparked in late 2017, in the wake of the Me Too campaign, when the founders grew tired of not finding entertainment that matched their values. Realising how unconsciously biased we all are, the company was founded in early 2018 with the idea of building an automated tool for detecting norms and stereotypes in popular culture. Our mission has stayed the same: contributing to a more equal and tolerant world by using technology to create awareness and change.