A new AI-powered editor agent developed by the online cinema Wink in collaboration with Rostelecom’s AI team can generate biographies from fragmented data and transform low-quality images into high-quality portraits of actors and crew members. The editor’s digital twin helps quickly fill previously incomplete metadata across film and series pages on the Wink platform. The tool improves user experience, search relevance, and recommendation efficiency.
Wink’s library includes more than 80,000 titles of video content from different countries and eras — from black-and-white films to modern blockbusters and series. While new releases are updated with complete metadata, information on thousands of older titles, released 15–20 years ago or more, is often incomplete.
When users open a film or series page on Wink, they see not just a list of names, but high-quality, consistently formatted images of cast and crew, along with biographies and filmographies of actors, directors, producers, and other contributors. This helps users navigate the catalogue more easily, discover familiar names, and find new content.
Oleg Nikitin, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Wink, commented:
“For the development of the AI editor, we used advanced solutions for processing fragmented data and images. In many cases, the system works with very low-quality photos — taken in poor conditions, with facial distortions, sunglasses, motion blur, or background clutter, and sometimes even frames captured from film reels.
Our technology performs blind facial restoration based on 68 key reference points, refining images pixel by pixel to achieve consistent standards — clear facial focus, neutral background, and no visual defects.
We also developed our own natural language processing algorithm that verifies the identity of individuals, ensuring that a photo corresponds to the correct person, even when names are identical. The same multi-stage verification applies to biographies, which include only confirmed data from trusted sources and are formatted according to Wink’s editorial standards. These processes significantly enhance the digital experience for our users.”
The entire workflow is designed to operate without human intervention. The AI editor performs a full cycle of tasks — from data search to final processing and publication:
intelligent search: the agent scans multiple open sources, verifying identity through a combination of data points (name, date of birth, profession, filmography);
ranking and selection: each image is evaluated for relevance and source priority, forming a shortlist for processing;
computer vision processing: facial alignment, scaling, centering, background normalization, and artifact smoothing, with optional AI upscaling up to 4x resolution;
automated quality control: processed images undergo multi-stage validation and scoring, with low-quality outputs rejected;
self-correction: if initial results fail quality checks, the agent automatically retries using new images and additional enhancement tools.
The AI editor operates on an ensemble of neural networks integrated within Rostelecom’s “Neurogateway” AI platform and powered by GPU-based infrastructure in the “Turbo Cloud.” Each model specializes in a specific task, passing results through a processing pipeline. All models have been trained specifically for facial recognition and biographical data processing.
Natalia Musorina, Director of AI Client and Partner Relations at Rostelecom, added:
“The launch of the AI editor demonstrates how collaboration between Wink and Rostelecom creates solutions that would be difficult to achieve independently. Wink brings deep expertise in content and user needs, while our AI team contributes advanced capabilities in building complex neural network systems.
The result is a fully autonomous agent that handles the entire workflow — from data discovery to final publication — significantly reducing manual effort while improving quality through multi-stage verification and self-correction.
Importantly, this is not a one-time integration but a scalable model of collaboration. We plan to continue developing this approach to deliver AI-driven value across the entire Rostelecom ecosystem.”
At the end of 2025, Wink also introduced an “Entertainment Agent” that uses AI to help users find content based on multiple criteria. Integration with the AI editor will further enhance recommendation speed and quality, as well as provide more detailed information about actors and production teams.
This new application of AI technology is expected to improve user satisfaction and make content discovery more efficient. This is particularly important given that research shows the longer viewers search for content, the less likely they are to start watching.