The Wimbledon tennis tournament, which commenced on Monday, witnessed a unique addition to its coverage this year. Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken over the role of commentary, already emerging as a winner in its own right. This notable change has the potential to significantly transform the broadcast coverage of the tournament, raising both positive and negative implications for the viewership experience.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club has recently revealed their plans to incorporate AI-powered commentary for this year’s Wimbledon Championships. The tournament aims to enhance the viewing experience by offering AI-generated audio and text commentary through their app and website.
IBM’s AI platform, Watson, is at the core of this feature, utilizing ball tracking data, player positions, and shot analysis to generate real-time commentary. By leveraging a generative AI model built upon language foundations, IBM iX experts collaborated with the All England Club to train the AI in the language specific to tennis, resulting in engaging and informative narration.
This development follows a trend seen earlier in the US Masters golf tournament, where AI commentary was also introduced.
Viewers will have the option to toggle the commentary on or off, allowing them to choose between the AI-generated commentary or the natural sounds of the game, including racket hits and crowd reactions.
In addition to AI commentary, Wimbledon has introduced another new feature called AI draw analysis. This innovative tool employs artificial intelligence to calculate statistics determining the likelihood of each player’s path to the singles draw final.
Factors such as potential opponents and players’ positions relative to their competitors contribute to their draw favorability rating. This unique insight offers tennis enthusiasts the opportunity to discover surprises and anomalies within the singles draw beyond what can be discerned solely from player rankings.
