The several artificial intelligence (AI) powered technologies that will be utilized to broadcast the Paris 2024 Olympic Games this summer have been made public by the Olympic Broadcasting Services, Warner Bros. Discovery, and NBC.
The three spoke at the IOC’s Olympic AI Agenda event on April 19 at the Lee Valley VeloPark in Stratford. They were represented by OBS CEO Yiannis Exarchos, WBD president and managing director for the UK & Ireland plus Sports Europe, and executive producer and president of NBC Olympics Production Molly Solomon. The entire two-hour event is available to watch below.
“We are working together with our partners, Intel, and for the first time, in Paris, we will put at the disposal of our broadcasters a platform where they can generate very fast, very customisable highlights that can be [customised] by country, by sport, and so on,” stated Exarchos, who disclosed that the OBS has been using AI tools since 2018.
“I can envision a world where eventually we get to a place where [you can] join a football match halfway through and you say to your device, ‘just show me the goals and the key moments from the first half,’ and within seconds you’ll have an automatically generated highlights package with voiceover,” Georgiou said, expressing optimism that this could go further.
“If that sounds a little unrealistic, that’s because we already use technology in our editorial workflows to create base cuts of editorial highlights that can be used to create that kind of opportunity in the future,” he continued.
“We are going to be using the automated highlights that OBS is offering in Paris,” Solomon disclosed. We’re also giving fan customization and personalization a lot of thought. Imagine stating your want on the platform and having it materialize right away.
“We really think that the video production process can be further enriched using these AI tools,” she continued. “Right now, so much is just manual tagging of gold medals, world records, and emotions.” This will provide us with specialized footage that we can use right away, as well as personalized content for our audience.
Georgiou stated that dubbing and translations for commentary that would not otherwise exist are two further areas where artificial intelligence might be used. Because there are 3800 hours of live competition, customizing the language is one of our toughest problems. We operate in 19 different languages, 47 distinct markets, and up to 30 events can be going on at once.
“We employ 400 commentators, but even with that number, we are unable to provide commentary on every hour of the Games,” he continued. How then do you leverage technology to improve translation and further localize that material in places where it is not feasible or affordable for you to do so? How can you expand the commentators’ reach into other areas?
Exarchos mentioned archives as an additional area that might be impacted. The IOC stated, “For us, this is a major project,” adding that the company is already collaborating with Alibaba to colorize and tag its archives. It’s critical going ahead because, in our opinion, it will increase the Olympic legacy’s accessibility to a larger audience throughout the year.
All three expressed their conviction that humans will continue to play a significant role in the production process when talking about these changes. “Everything we saw today gets me so excited about all of these AI tools,” Solomon remarked. Although AI can improve our presentation, human monitoring must be used to balance it.
“We must defend the rights to intellectual property. Both jobs and prejudice need to be protected from. Therefore, as we move forward, we must continue to value human knowledge, creativity, and moral leadership.
“We don’t believe that AI can replace the creative process,” Georgiou said in agreement. It’s a tool to support and stimulate the creative process, not to take its place. As a business and an industry, it is our duty to figure out how to reskill workers.
“For me, the opportunity with AI is not to displace jobs,” Exarchos said in closing. In actuality, it’s to provide people more chances to engage in more fascinating activities. Similar to other significant technological shifts, it is typically established that rather than eliminating jobs, technology actually creates a need for new talent.
