This technology powers a variety of efforts to improve fan experience and engagement.
Artificial intelligence is fueling activity in the sports business and technology industry, as well as in most industries. At the recent SBJ Tech Week conference, executives from Genius Sports, IBM, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services spoke about where and why this technology is being deployed, its applications to sports production, and how it will create more engaging fan experiences. We explained how it can be provided.
Sean Conroy, Genius Sports: “The availability of sports across digital platforms and changing consumer behaviors are creating new opportunities and possibilities to drive engagement.”
“We're at an interesting crossroads here in the media and sports ecosystem.” Sean Conroy, Vice President, North America, Genius Sports, during a brief presentation on the future of immersive broadcasting. “The availability of sports across digital platforms and changing consumer behaviors are creating new opportunities and possibilities to drive engagement. [expect] These new sports experiences of the future will focus more on choice, allowing individuals and fans to curate and own their experiences. ”
Conroy said Genius Sports will partner with the NFL to deploy artificial intelligence and data to “create new and enhanced content experiences” for the league's media partners and the NFL+ streaming service. For example, on-screen graphics display the player's route and speed. field.
His company is also working with Amazon Prime Video. thursday night football An alternative broadcast called “Prime Vision.'' “We took data and applied machine learning and AI to create a game mode focused on the stats-hungry, analytical type of fan.”
Julie Souza, Global Head of Sports, Amazon Web ServicesHe noted that a lot of energy is being focused on artificial intelligence around “operational efficiency” and the use of technology to complete “time-consuming tasks.” For example, AWS is working with the PGA Tour to launch a chat bot for internal teams and production partners to “query multimodal data,” retrieving content from video archives, scoring data, and historical media guides. , provided additional context during the tour. golf match.
From left: Gary Warech of Veritone, Julie Souza of AWS, Elizabeth O'Brien of IBM, and Albert Lai of Google Cloud at SBJ Tech Week.
AWS will soon be working with Germany's Bundesliga to create text commentary in multiple languages. “There are emotions in sports,” Souza pointed out. “It has to be communicated. It has to be the colloquialism of that culture, that country, that language. How do we teach a computer to do that? That's where I start to get excited, to make sure that we have it and that we're managing it seriously.”
IBM debuts AI sports commentary at the 2023 Masters Golf Tournament.Said Elizabeth O'Brien, Program Director, Worldwide Sports and Entertainment Sponsorship Marketing, IBM, “Even people who were actually blind could understand what was going on, but there was also the accessibility role of being able to watch what they wanted to watch when they wanted to watch it and having them actually explain what they were seeing. .”
Panelists shared their predictions for the future of generative AI over the next 12 to 36 months.
“The applications for good old AI/ML are still limitless,” Souza says. “And then you can see where the next generation of AI is going. I don't think we're working backwards from the AI generation. “What are the business problems we're trying to solve? “Is that so?” I think you would say. Are they trying to make the game safer? Are they trying to engage fans more? Are you trying to lower costs? ” …Then you try to work backwards to find the right tool. ”
Mr O'Brien said: [the basic principles] right. You need to make sure your data is correct and reliable. You need to make sure you choose the right base model. You need to make sure that governance is well established. You need to monitor your model to make sure it doesn't hallucinate or drift off. All of those are things that need to evolve as well. ”
Albert Lai, Director of Global Strategic Industries, Media and Entertainment, Google Cloudexpects that companies will begin to publicly share generative AI success stories and achievements such as productivity, cost savings, and value creation. “Encourage the entire ecosystem to say, ‘Yes, there is a responsible way to do this while protecting consumers.’” Companies should not only leverage their data, but profit and monetize it. We do it in a way that makes everyone healthy. ”
