And the Oscar goes to…La La Land, if Bing Predicts is right
Bing will also feature a red carpet shopping experience, clips from memorable moments and a chatbot named Zo.
Bing Predicts says La La Land will win Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards.
In what has become something of an annual tradition, Bing Predicts has looked into its crystal ball and determined the 89th Academy Awards on February 26 are going to be a very good night for La La Land.
That’s because Bing analysis indicates the comedy-drama-musical should to take home statuettes for Best Picture, as well as Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Original Song and Best Production Design – in addition to Best Actress for Emma Stone.
But, Bing predicts it won’t be a total sweep. In fact, the preternaturally dreamy Ryan Gosling may be the new Oscar equivalent of Leonardo DiCaprio as Bing says the Best Actor winner will most likely be Casey Affleck for his turn in Manchester by the Sea. (La La Land’s Gosling is in third with a 19% chance to win, behind Affleck at 38% and Denzel Washington’s performance in Fences, which Bing says has a 20% chance to win Best Actor.)
Bing says Best Supporting Actor is most likely to go to Mahershala Ali for his performance in Moonlight and Best Supporting Actress will go to Viola Davis for Fences.
According to a rep, Bing Predicts uses machine learning models to analyze and detect trends from web and social activity “from data both unique to Bing and Microsoft as well as event-specific signals.”
“For committee-based contests like the Oscars, web and social signals can highly correlate with how the committee has voted in the past, thus allowing us to infer how this year’s Academy Awards will play out,” the rep added.
In 2015, Bing accurately predicted 84% of all categories – including 100% accuracy in the top six categories, the rep said. In 2016, Bing correctly predicted 17 of 24 categories, or 71%, she added. What's more, Doug Zanger, Americas editor for The Drum, won $200 in an office pool four years ago solely using Bing’s predictions.
“They asked me, ‘How did you pick so many?’ and I said, ‘Well, I did my research,’ not adding, ‘THANKS, BING!’” Zanger said. “I also mumbled some other garbage about how I was really paying more attention that year and I spent a good amount of time on it. Five minutes with Bing and boom, I’m a winner.”
A full list of Oscar Night 2017 predictions is available by searching “Academy Awards” on Bing, where users will find a carousel highlighting projected winners and a downloadable ballot, so viewers can follow along with their own predictions for each award.
What’s more, Bing is featuring what it calls a red carpet shopping experience in which fans can revisit 2016 fashions and see 2017 red carpet styles – and eventually shop for their favorites.
“Come back to Bing the morning after and we’ll show where you can buy similar red carpet looks,” Bing said in a blog post. “Bing image-recognition technology scans photos of a celebrity’s clothes, searches for the best matches and then help you discover the shopping sites where you can find similar outfits.”
Bing will also curate the night’s best moments in what it calls must-watch clips the day after.
To prepare for the broadcast, Bing said users can search for “movies near me,” and connect with its social AI Zo via Facebook Messenger or Kik to chat about the event as it happens.