This Texas Company Is Fighting Hollywood’s Gender Inequality With Hard Data From Movie Scripts

“The analytics aren’t telling you what to do. They’re telling you ‘this is what you’re doing. Is this what you intend?’ StoryFit is here to help the movie industry to really gut-check their decisions.”

Recent events have gotten Hollywood and the nation talking about sexism in the film industry, from sexual harassment to the dearth of female directors. But sexism onscreen is a major issue too. Recent studies show that women have less than half as many named or speaking roles as men. Women or girls lead or co-lead the plot in less than a quarter of films.

An Austin, Texas company hopes artificial intelligence can help resolve onscreen inequality. StoryFit has developed software that uses AI to analyze script data and deliver insights. It can give information on everything from the types of character emotions portrayed to which other films it resembles in specific ways. Film and TV production companies, even book publishers, use the analytics to make acquisition decisions, track changes through development or get predictive marketing data.

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