Wimbledon to use AI commentary during tournament, considering other high-tech changes down the line

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Wimbledon’s All England Club will introduce artificial intelligence (AI)-powered commentary and captions for its coverage at this year’s tournament. 

"This new insight will help tennis fans to uncover anomalies and potential surprises in the singles draw, which would not be apparent by looking only at the players’ ranking," IBM, which developed the technology, said. 

IBM trained its watsonx AI platform to utilize the "unique language of tennis," and the All England Club has provided the platform access to player stats such as the power index, which analyzes performance, The Daily Telegraph reported. The technology will provide captions for highlights reels online, but could eventually lead to airing live AI commentary.

Wimbledon has utilized AI in stats packages since 2017 to create the power index and other stats. 

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IBM’s Kevin Farrar stressed that the company does not see the technology as an eventual replacement for commentary but rather as a tool to enhance the experience. 

"I see AI as very much complementing the human element, rather than replacing," Farrar said. "You can’t replace John McEnroe doing commentary, that human element always needs to be there. It’s very much supplementing and complementing."

"For Wimbledon, it’s about providing commentary in the future on matches that don’t currently have human commentary - like the seniors, juniors, wheelchair [events]."

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The All-England Club Technology Director Bill Jinks admitted that it would be "technically feasible" to train AI to mimic commentators like McEnroe — as long as intellectual property agreements were in place. 

"It’s not based on a specific person, or an individual and their style," Farrar stressed about the current plan. "You can see in the future that you could train it in specific styles, languages, voices. So this is a step on that journey."

Jinks clarified that the tech department will not look at replacing human umpires, though he considered that replacing line judges over time could happen. The men's ATP tour announced that it would replace line judges in full by 2025. 

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AI-generated commentary has arisen as a surprise use for the technology, with various sectors from sports to news broadcasts considering uses. 

The European broadcasting union recently announced it would look to clone the voice of commentator Hannah England to provide commentary for the European Athletics Championship’s YouTube channel, The Guardian reported. 

Veritone, a platform that utilizes AI to generate audio and video presentations, last year purchased startup VocaliD and has indicated it could recreate Walter Cronkite’s voice. 

The BBC, which broadcasts the competition, did not say whether it would use AI commentary for live coverage of Wimbledon in the coming years.