Nick Halstead, Founder and CEO, GVTLabs; Rhys McLachlan, Head of Media Partnerships, GVTLabs
While chatbots and LLMs have made it easy for consumers to summarise swathes of text-based context, video has remained largely unqueryable, making it difficult to search through long-form video or large content libraries for specific moments or answers.
Today, GVTLabs has emerged from stealth with an AI product designed to make video searchable by consumers seeking information, as well as brands and media owners looking for creators when running a campaign. The AskGVT tool enables users to query a creator’s video feed and receive the answer in the form of text analysis, while also surfacing video clips, with a link to the full video.
Nick Halstead, founder of GVTLabs, and previously founder of InfoSum (and a pro racing driver), traces the idea back to two years ago, when he was trying to work out how to jack up his BMW. Failing to find the answer in the car’s manual, he turned to YouTube to see a demonstration, but was met by hour-long videos featuring an array of different models.
“I just wanted it to show me where the jacking point is,” Halstead tells VideoWeek. “So why can’t we give that answer? I want to get to the level where I can ask a detailed question, and have it show me an answer that’s not just being trained off what people have said, but actually the physical actions of people.'”
Straight from the source
Although AskGVT functions similarly to an LLM (for video), Halstead notes that the product is differentiated by the answers coming solely from what is found within the creator’s videos, rather than summarising the average response from multiple sources in varying contexts.
If the creator in question has discussed a topic across hundreds of videos, the results could surface numerous clips, but all of them harnessing the expertise of a single creator. “What’s great is that we can find all those bits of knowledge, but it’s always in their voice, it’s not a clone,” comments Halstead. “We’re not trying to do this whole ‘clone a human’ thing because that’s not what people want.”
Through the AskPage, creators have a public interface where fans can query their video library, with the option to charge for access in day, week or monthly passes. Creators can also control which videos are available to search, and can plug in their feeds from various social channels. Creators additionally have a Studio where they can query their own videos in order to identify and plan high-performing content, and create decks and reports from the data.
The AskGVT AskPage
Rhys McLachlan, the company’s newly appointed Head of Media Partnerships, and previously ITV’s Director of Addressable Advertising, adds that the system “contemporises” the creator’s content, meaning all videos are simultaneously searched without answers being prioritised as in search and social media channels.
“You’re not at the whim of the algorithm or whatever’s happening from the big platforms,” says McLachlan. “What this presents as available for query for your fans and your followers is everything you’ve ever published.”
From monetisation to education
The company also offers enterprise products for media companies, including GVTLabs Studio, which provides private video intelligence across an archive; GVTLabs Roster, where brands and media owners can find the right creators for a campaign; and GVTLabs Channels, covering a media owner’s talent, content and rights-holder material.
McLachlan notes that the product “works both ways”, enabling consumers to quickly surface 10-year-old tips or recipes, while also allowing media companies to mine their own archives, for instance to respond to issues in the news cycle through video.
“Whether you’re a PSB broadcaster, you’re a rights holder, you’re an entity like DAZN that specialises in sports, if you’ve got content sitting in your archive, this unlocks that latent value,” says McLachlan. “It’s a really powerful way of bringing that deep knowledge and expertise into the news cycle without having to send a poor work experience kid off to find the episode and clip it.”
Halstead adds that the product also serves as an education tool, helping video-native younger users find answers in the format in which they are used to receiving information.
“There’s obviously a huge change in the way kids, and adults, but especially kids, demand a new form of attention,” says Halstead. “We’re so used to TikTok, and we can educate people using this because it’s a much more compelling way to get an answer. It’s not just text, it’s about video clips as well.”
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