Guide is a Miami-based startup that wants to accelerate and improve the way in which video content is produced by journalists and consumed by audiences.
By combining the latest text-to-speech and avatar technology, the team has discovered a way to create automated videos covering users’ favorite news articles, blogs and social streams.
Guide was selected as the winner of the Microsoft Bizspark Startup Rally second round at The Next Web Conference. The team will now advance to the finals, joining Swipe from round one and wildcard winner PayLane.
Freddie Laker, CEO and founder of Guide joined TNW’s Paul Sawers and startup rally judge Mark Voernmans, an emerging business manager at Microsoft, to talk about the product and its future.
“I believe with every fibre of my being that in the next three to five years, we are going to enter the stage that we were promised in science fiction, which is this moment that you can walk up to your TV, like in Total Recall and Minority Report and interact and talk to the TV and be generating TV in real-time,” Laker said.
“That’s our ambition and I think we’re at the beginning of the journey to get there. If we can crack it, I think we’ve got a billion dollar idea on our hands.”
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Image Credit: Julia Deboer/Flickr
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