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Tennis fans “shouldn’t be surprised” that IBM’s Watson is “bringing even more AI commentary to the 2024 US Open,” according to Marty Swant of DIGIDAY. The company “has been a partner of the tournament for so long that it may play doubles matches.” The US Tennis Association and IBM, which have been partners since 1990, are offering “generative AI to produce real-time match reports and AI-generated long-form articles that are reviewed by the USTA’s editorial staff” with their new features. This year’s tournament, which began yesterday, “will also offer fans more frequent AI commentary using IBM’s latest AI models to enable more expressive and contextual insights.” Meanwhile, a redesigned SlamTracker will provide detailed analytics “before, during and after every match.” Brian Ryerson, the USTA’s senior director of digital strategy, said the use of Watson “helps add depth, speed and scale to the USTA’s editorial coverage.” He said it also helps solve the “blank page problem” as the team tracks more than 200 matches. The AI models “collect more than 7 million data points during the tournament,” from statistics on serve speed and win-loss ratios to analyzing thousands of tennis articles and blogs. Training Watson meant using the latest AI models to train him in the vernacular of the sport – and “how to pronounce players’ names – as well as other aspects such as the speed and pitch of how tennis commentary should sound.” In the future, “they might try using different voices depending on the event.” They are also “exploring ways to translate commentary into other languages, starting with Spanish as a new addition for 2024” (DIGIDAY, 27.8.).
