AI Developer Elastic Media Launches Blink Esports Platform

A new esports platform aims to improve player interaction with games through artificial intelligence. Blink is the product of Elastic media, a technology company that has been developing AI solutions since 2015. The platform recently secured its first $3 million in seed funding.

Created by a team of 16 experts from the fields of video streaming, esports, and artificial intelligence, Blink evolved out of a desire to apply deep-learning technology to competitive gaming. The platform enhances the social experience of esports by automatically detecting defining moments in an esports match, recording them, and making them into sharable stories.

According to the official announcement, Blink is a mobile-first platform that will work with mobile devices capable of esports streaming. It will allow players to creat their own “Top Ten” esports video highlight reels, making it a useful tool for professionals to use to promote their skills as well as for amateurs to trash one-another in game communities.

Blink CEO Ronen Shoval says the idea for Blink came about when he noticed esports were designed to be enjoyable to play, not to watch. In an effort to capitalize on the spectator appeal of professional-level esports, his team came up with a way to make watching video games more exciting by using AI to cherry pick the highlights.

The goal, says Shoval, is to make watching and creating highlight reels as fun as playing the games themselves. He believes the Blink platform will attract even more spectators to the sport by unlocking the entertainment value of game-play videos for all viewers.