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Video Services May Use AI To Crack Down on Password Sharing (variety.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Still using your ex-roommates cable credentials to watch "Game of Thrones?" That may soon be getting a lot harder, thanks to new efforts to crack down on password sharing for pay TV and online video services. One of these efforts, launched by London-based Synamedia ahead of next week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), even uses artificial intelligence to uncover notorious password sharers. Credentials Sharing Insight, as the new service is being called, targets both casual password sharing as well as criminal enterprises looking to resell pay TV login information. However, the focus clearly is on friends and family taking their generosity a bit too far, explained Symanedia chief product officer Jean-Marc Racine in an interview with Variety this week.
[...] Most services have tried to curtail password sharing by limiting the number of simultaneous streams, with little else to go by to identify abuse. "Today, you are in the dark," he said. Synamedia's solution on the other hand digs through lots of data to cluster users based on their streaming behavior. This can include user's physical location (someone streaming from both coasts at the same time) as well as general usage patterns (someone streaming 24/7). The company can even take a look at the specific content streamed by a user to identify unusual patterns. Based on these clues, Synamedia trains models to score users on a scale of 1 to 10, indicating whether they are likely sharing their passwords or not.
[...] Most services have tried to curtail password sharing by limiting the number of simultaneous streams, with little else to go by to identify abuse. "Today, you are in the dark," he said. Synamedia's solution on the other hand digs through lots of data to cluster users based on their streaming behavior. This can include user's physical location (someone streaming from both coasts at the same time) as well as general usage patterns (someone streaming 24/7). The company can even take a look at the specific content streamed by a user to identify unusual patterns. Based on these clues, Synamedia trains models to score users on a scale of 1 to 10, indicating whether they are likely sharing their passwords or not.
WTF DO YOU NEED AI FOR THIS?!
Geez - just cap the number of simultaneous logins to whatever your business is comfortable with (usually 2 or 3) and/or record the device IDs.
It's not rocket science people. But then AI is the new electrolytes... it's got wut plants crave!
Also, none of those metrics are failsafe. Some legitimate customers will travel a lot (varying location), work alternating day and night shifts (stream at seemingly random hours), and/or have irregular sleep cycles or suffer from insomnia (sometimes spending all day and night watching Netflix). Judging peoples taste in series to judge whether they are one or multiple people also sounds like something that can backfire for people that legitimately have unusual tastes, or people that often have friends visiting with different tastes. I hope their solution is to at least ask the customer for an explanation, instead of an "AI" simply autobanning all "weird" customers.