Tennis enthusiasts, followers, and fans, you will love this news. IBM yesterday announced its partnership with Wimbledon to bring artificial intelligence-powered (AI) features into the tournament this year. Here are the details of this story.
Wimbledon has tapped the Big Blue to introduce AI-powered features into the tennis games, particularly AI commentary and AI draw analysis, the latter being the first of its kind.
Fans can access these features via the Wimbledon app and the tournament’s official website.
Jonathan Adashek, IBM’s Senior Vice President for Marketing and Communications, said, “IBM is bringing new layers of insight and engagement to the 2023 Championships through the use of innovative new tools, powered by foundation models and generative AI from watsonx.”
Adashek added that the AI and data platform IBM will use to create incredible fan experiences for the tournament is the same technology the company uses to transform businesses in front of clients across various industries.
One of these features is AI commentary, which will provide tennis fans watching match highlights clips with audio commentary of crucial moments, together with captions that they can choose whether to toggle on or off.
With this, they will have a more insightful experience learning about the key moments from the matches.
“Its introduction this year is a step towards making commentary available in an exciting way for matches outside of Wimbledon’s Show Courts, which already have live human commentary,” IBM stated.
Another feature IBM is set to introduce in this year’s Wimbledon is the AI Draw Analysis, which is the first statistic of this kind in the world of tennis.
This feature utilizes AI to define how close each player in the singles draw is to the final. A player’s odds will be presented with a rating and scale based on factors that include their match-ups against future opponents and how their position in the draw compares side by side with their competitors.
With this AI Draw Analysis, the audience can immediately know specific outcomes, which would not be apparent just by looking at the players’ ranking, thus giving rise to more debate, discussion, and engagement among the fans.
“We are constantly innovating with our partners at IBM to provide Wimbledon fans, wherever they are in the world, with an insightful and engaging digital experience of The Championships,” said Usama Al-Qassab, Marketing and Commercial Director of The All England Lawn Tennis Club, the club providing the venue for the Wimbledon Championships. “This year, we’re introducing new features for our digital platforms that use the latest AI technology from IBM to help fans gain even more insight into the singles draw and access commentary on a wider variety of matches through our match highlights videos.”
Wimbledon is one of the four major Grand Slam tournaments in tennis, alongside the US Open, Australian Open, and French Open. It is also the world’s oldest tennis tournament, and the most prestigious.
The 2023 Wimbledon Championships are happening from July 3rd to July 16th.
