Will an AI robot comment on the Paris Olympics? Stations are testing

The broadcasts from the Olympic Games in Paris will be a real a test of the use of artificial intelligence in showing major sporting events. At least that’s what will happen in the US, where NBCUniversal, which has the rights to show the Games, is planning several AI-related innovations. Warner Bros., which holds the TV rights in Europe (Discovery and Eurosport), is more cautious and has assured that viewers in Europe will see the classic broadcasts.

NBCUniversal plans to use artificial intelligence to comment on some of the events in Paris. For this purpose, the network will use the voice of legendary American commentator Al Michaels. The network will also use AI capabilities to create clips of the most interesting events from the Games. Artificial intelligence, having access to recordings from all events on a given day, will edit up to several thousand different clips per day for NBC.

He approaches the topic more carefully Warner Bros. The station admitted that before the Games it was testing the possibilities of using AI in broadcasts. The results, however, turned out to be unsatisfactory. Broadcaster vice president Scott Young pointed out that while the AI ​​commentary worked well, it lacked emotion.

Watching the sample video, you could see that the commentary was correct. However, there was a lack of proper narration and emotion. For example, during the broadcast from Tokyo, in which Italian sprinter Marcell Jacobs amazed the world by winning the gold medal, the Italian commentators shouted with joy, expressing true joy. It is very difficult to generate this by an automaton

– Young added.

Both networks have announced that they will continue to work on using artificial intelligence in broadcasts. We can therefore expect that the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028 will be much more dominated by AI broadcasts.

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