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All eyes are on the Olympic Games underway in Paris since last Friday. The games will witness the first examples of implementation of the Olympic AI Agenda that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set out in April. The IOC has called AI a ‘game changer in sport’. How is AI being used at the Olympics? ET explains:

How are the Paris Olympics using AI?

To safeguard athletes from cyber abuse, AI is being deployed to monitor hundreds of thousands of social media accounts and flag abusive messages.

The IOC introduced an AI-assisted platform for automated highlights generation, which uses AI to identify and customise key video moments from thousands of hours of competition.

AI models for this have been trained on a vast archive of Olympic sports content.

New AI tools are being deployed to enhance the fairness and accuracy of judging and refereeing through the provision of precise metrics.

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AI-powered data insights and motion tracking technology will allow more intelligent analysis and tracking of athletes’ performances across sports like diving, athletics, gymnastics, marathon, and rowing.

Energy consumption will be monitored with AI and the insights will be used for more sustainable planning in future, the IOC said in a blog.

How are top companies pitching in?

US tech giant Intel is the official AI platform partner for the games this year, with its AI software tools helping to train the AI models being used. It also rolled out AthleteGPT, a GenAI chatbot on the IOC’s Athlete365 platform to assist about 11,000 athletes in Paris with queries around venues, rules and guidelines, etc.

Intel is also helping develop ‘digital twins’ of games venues for better planning on power usage, camera placement and accessibility issues.

Google is partnering with broadcast network NBC and Team USA to integrate its AI products for better storytelling. For instance, Gemini and the ‘Overviews’ feature can be used by broadcasters to help explain aspects of a sport. Google Maps “Immerse” feature can be used to highlight the venues.

Alibaba is providing multi-camera replay systems with AI-powered reconstruction in the cloud, to create 3D models and mapping of additional viewpoints across 21 sports and disciplines, for more compelling analysis.

What does the future look like?

“We are taking a measured approach for now, to test and evaluate how AI can be used to enhance the Olympic Games and have them future-ready,” said Ilario Corna, IOC’s chief technology officer.

IOC said a project on AI for talent identification will be launched globally in 2025 to make sports more accessible.

However, civil rights groups have raised concerns about AI-based video surveillance mechanisms being used in Paris for the duration of the games for real-time monitoring and identification of ‘suspicious’ activity.