AI Takes Center Court at Wimbledon and Paris Olympics
- By CDOTrends editors
- June 25, 2024
The eyes of sports fans will be on the Paris Olympics and the tennis at Wimbledon this year, and both events will use AI powers for the first time.
AI will be harnessed in Paris to promote inclusivity under a strategic partnership between the International Olympic Committee and Intel.
Intel hardware and software will provide immersive and interactive on-site experiences while also helping to improve universal accessibility and demonstrate how AI can enrich Olympic broadcast coverage.
“This summer, Intel will accelerate its mission of bringing ‘AI Everywhere’ using Intel solutions at Paris 2024, showcasing the powerful potential of technology and AI to create immersive and interactive experiences at the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 for millions around the world,” said Sarah Vickers, leader of Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic Games Office.
Intel processors will power AI applications, impacting athletes, coaches and spectators.
This includes an interactive, AI-powered fan activation to take spectators on a journey to become an Olympic athlete.
Trained on Intel Gaudi accelerators and running on Intel Xeon processors with built-in AI acceleration and optimized with Intel OpenVINO, the experience will use AI and computer vision to analyze athletic drills and match each participant’s profile to a specific Olympic sport.
Intel’s technology is also driving advances in universal accessibility for the visually impaired. Leveraging AI built on Intel Xeon, 3D models of the Team USA High Performance Centre in Paris and the International Paralympic Committee headquarters in Bonn, Germany, will allow indoor and voice navigation via a smartphone application.
Intel’s AI technology is also being used to help preserve the legacy of the Olympic Games, with neural object cloning set to transform video footage of artifacts in the Olympic collections into 3D digital models.
This solution, developed by Intel’s Emergent AI Lab, is being tested to enable the Olympic Museum to bring some of its collections into interactive digital environments, where viewers can rotate and explore pieces of Olympic history as if they had them in their hands.
At Wimbledon, the event is partnering with IBM’s AI and data platform Watsonx, which is being used to power a Catch Me Up feature for the Wimbledon 2024 lawn tennis championship, displays pre- and post-match player cards with AI-generated player stories and analysis through the official event website and app.
The Catch Me Up feature was built with IBM’s Granite large language model to provide AI-generated text trained in the Wimbledon editorial style.
Image credit: iStockphoto/PeopleImages