How AI is trying to medal at the Paris Olympics
As the 2024 Olympic Games commence, the world's top athletes will float down the Seine, walk under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, and compete in the 33rd iteration of the centuries old competition. Backing their push for the podium — resting in the technologically adept hands of coaches, athletes, and viewers, alike — is a more modern player: AI.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) published its "Olympic AI Agenda" earlier this year, a "holistic approach to explore the great potential of AI, while mitigating the risks," the organization explained. The agenda set out a future-forward list of goals, which include game optimization, talent detection, and the "reduction of human bias." Many of those are being tested for the first time in Paris.
Intel, an Olympic Partner since 2017, is the event's 5G, Process, and AI platform partner, with the former title more relevant than ever at the 2024 games. The company has spent the last five years building out their established line of hardware and software offerings to aid the IOC's vision of bringing AI into sports.
Sarah Vickers, head of Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic program, told Mashable that she believes AI will have its biggest Olympic impact in areas like event operations, the data-hungry world of broadcasting, and the fan experience itself.
"The Olympic ecosystem has had a rough couple of years," Vickers said outside of the company's on-the-ground AI Lab in Paris. "Now, if you think about it, all of the dynamics of the traditional games are back. There’s fans in the stands, there’s lots of people moving around, there’s a lot of operational challenges. The other thing is that the expectations of the user and of athletes have changed. They are used to having information at their fingertips. It’s this perfect timing for us to be able to demonstrate how we’re showing AI everywhere.”
Intel isn't the only company fulfilling Olympic dreams through AI. On Monday, Google, Team USA, and NBCUniversal announced an official partnership that named the tech giant Team USA's "Official Search AI Partner." The deal will see Google's AI offerings combined with live NBC coverage, game explanations, and user Olympic searches.
The IOC is revving up its AI game in a period of intense growth across the tech industry, with the hope of bringing back historic viewer numbers and, more subtly, cutting costs — but even they have to consider the wider implications of AI. In conversation with Vickers on Intel's Technically Speaking podcast, Ilario Corna, Chief Information Technology Officer at the IOC, said that the IOC is thinking as intensely about trust as it is innovations, which may soon mean building their own "OlympicGPT."
As the IOC and its partners dive head first into AI, many of the games' biggest swings may go undetected by its audience, operating behind-the-scenes at the world's most historic sporting event.
AI is helping digitize the competition
Intel has been leading the game's growing technology investments for years, including the opening ceremony show at the 2022 Beijing games, which featured hundreds of Intel Premium drones. Those games also saw the arrival of artificially intelligent platforms. But the Paris games offer the first time many of Intel's tech will be deployed at scale.
Generative AI, for example, will make its opening appearance in the hands of athletes, far away from viewers, as part of the Games' Athlete365 app. A brand new IOC Assistant Chatbot, powered by Intel's Gaudi 2 generative AI platform, can answer match and regulation questions for participants. Machine learning, meanwhile, is being used to create a safer environment for athletes. Both the IOC and Intel are hailing new AI-boosted tech used to detect cyber abuse and online harassment thrown at athletes from online hecklers — an issue highlighted by Simon Biles' frank conversations about mental health following the 2020 Olympics.
Speaking at the IOC's AI Agenda launch, American skier Lindsey Vonn told attendees that this could be life-changing: "The fact that AI will be able to, in real time, take these comments down, and not only that, but also be able to help them prosecute people… that is huge. Because that will, I think, change the dynamics of social media."
The IOC's larger AI plans include platform support for anti-doping organizations and athlete education on health, safety, and technology. Intel's computer vision and other data visualization tech will also offer teams individualized analysis of performance that can build out better, safer recovery plans and even predict potential injuries, Corna explained — in addition to what many contend could be medal-winning coaching and training assistance and improved judging.
AI is finding ways to make the games more accessible
AI and AR are stepping in to assist guests and athletes with disabilities, as well. Intel has launched new wayfinding tech, powered by onsite LiDAR devices and the company's OpenVINO technology, to provide turn-by-turn, real-time indoor navigation for those who are blind or have low vision. It's based on an ongoing Intel indoor navigation partnership with GoodMaps. The same gamut of Intel AI tech at the Olympic games are also supporting athletes at the Paralympic games, with Vickers and others seeing future potential for AI support in rapid on-site translation and accessibility needs.
AI is now being used to even out the playing field for Olympic hopefuls, too, through AI-supported scouting. The technology is known as 3D Athlete Tracking, or 3DAT, which captures computer vision data of athletes, processed on Intel's AI platform, and spits out 3D biomechanical reports. The IOC has tested this in areas with historic gaps in resources and funding, like athletes in Senegal.
"The possibilities for the deployment of AI within sport represent a ground-breaking opportunity for the global accessibility of sport," wrote the IOC in the release of this year's AI Agenda.
AI is leading the Olympics into a data-enhanced future
Advancements in AI are bringing the Olympics up to par with other sectors. Vickers hailed the use of AI to create highly tailored highlight reels, selected and cut together based on the preferences and interests of viewers themselves, as one of the foremost ways AI will revolutionize the games. That's because it'll cut down on issues of speed and access, especially for broadcasters, and appeal to the growing desire for personalization among AI proponents.
There's industry-changing potential here, too. Intel's Deep Learning Boost is creating the Olympics' first end-to-end 8K live streaming experience for online audiences, and making mass data sets available to reporters and broadcast teams in real time. Meanwhile, Intel's volumetric capture technology is quite literally changing how athletes may appear on screens in the future.
Housed in the athlete Olympic village, Intel is powering a 360, 3D image generating studio that can scan athlete's likenesses and render 3D versions of themselves — it's a fun AI-powered gag for athletes to send back home, but also the most likely way we'll engage with holograms on live TV.
"The AI experience is not changing what’s at the heart of the games, which is the athletes."
“You’ll capture the athlete in the 3D studio, and that can be sent to anywhere in the world," Vickers explained. "It could be a virtual broadcast studio in the U.S., India, anywhere in the world. And it will look like the athlete is on stage with the host. It’s going to look real, that they’re standing side by side.”
The IOC sees digital advancements like these as cost-cutting moves to make the game and its athletes more accessible to all, while also decreasing its "broadcast footprint," or the environmental impacts of live broadcasting at scale; That's, of course, ignoring AI's hotly debated environmental impact.
As viewers keep an eye on medal counts, the new Team USA and Google partnership will see Olympic information integrated into the search platform's new AI Overviews and generative AI assistant, Google Gemini. Actor and "Chief Superfan Commentator" Leslie Jones is set to use Gemini during her coverage of the games on NBC's Peacock.
The popularization of human-like AI assistants at large is joining with the tradition of Olympic commentators in other ways, too. Announced last month, NBC is offering customized, 10-minute long Olympic updates for Peacock users, all done in the AI voice of famous sportscaster Al Michaels. As NBC clarified again in a later press briefing, viewers don't need to worry in the age of nonconsensual deep fakes: Michaels gave full consent for the use of his voice and likeness.
And AI's being used before, during, and after the games' run. New, highly-detailed 3D models of Olympic facilities (known as "Digital Twins") allow broadcasters, event planners, and teams to navigate their Olympic experience ahead of time, or even design entire coverage plans virtually. This can make it easier to envision potential navigation hurdles for attendees and logistic coordinators considering accessibility. Looking to the future, this could involve a model for making real-time adjustments for those with disabilities, Vickers explained.
The list is far from over: AI is also powering Olympic archive digitization, so that the memorabilia of the games can live on forever in virtual repositories.
"The AI experience is not changing what’s at the heart of the games, which is the athletes," Vickers said. "We’re trying to improve the experience for everyone, whether that be the athlete or the fan, but it’s not going to change the fun of the sport. It’s only going to make it better."
AI's Olympic efforts raise more questions of security and privacy
But concerns about the integration of AI around the games remain. The French government has noted its plans to use private sector AI technology to "conduct pervasive and persistent surveillance before, during, and after the Games," FastCompany reported, as the growing Olympic stage spurs more and more security risk. In April, France's office of the Prime Minister negotiated a decree allowing the government expanded abilities to wiretap; collect geolocation, communications, and computer data; and capture even more visual and audio data from civilians. This adds to a far-reaching, experimental video surveillance system that uses AI-powered cameras to flag potential security risks.
Privacy advocates raised heads about similarly pervasive surveillance, as well as digital security risks, at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Vickers says the French government's AI plans have no overlap with what's happening inside the games. Intel's Responsible AI team is navigating a world of data privacy laws and internal security to keep their systems controversy free, she says, working in tandem with the Olympic planning committee.
As the multifaceted investments of the Paris games make clear, AI is all around us. “It is everywhere," agreed Vickers. "But the athletes are core to what we’re doing, and that’s going to remain the same.”
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