AI-generated Al Michaels delivers Paris Olympics highlights

The Olympic Games have their roots in ancient times, and now they will be incorporating modern technology.

This year, highlights of the Summer Olympics will be provided by artificial intelligence, specifically an AI-generated narration from Al Michaels.

Executives at NBCUniversal and the streaming service Peacock said Wednesday they will be releasing a customized daily Olympics highlights show for streaming subscribers that will feature the voice of Michaels, the 79-year-old American announcer who first covered the games decades ago.

But Michaels won't be holed up in the broadcast booth every night providing a rundown of the dozens of Olympic events that took place. Instead, the Peacocks show will be trained on clips from NBC, where Michaels joined the network in 2006 and was a longtime announcer for Sunday Night Football, to construct coherent, realistic sentences and provide his unique expertise and storytelling skills, the company said.

Mr. Michaels approved the use of his voice.

“When I heard about the idea I was skeptical but obviously interested,” Michaels said in a company statement. “Then I saw a demo detailing what they had in mind and I said, 'I'm in.'”

It raises an important question, reminiscent of Michaels' most famous Olympic call: Do NBCUniversal executives believe in miracles?

NBC has had exclusive coverage of the Olympics in the United States since 1996, and the network has often faced intense public scrutiny over its coverage of the games.

Handing over the keys to an AI carries new risks. An AI-generated Al Michaels would undoubtedly attract attention because of its novelty. And as AI has proliferated over the past 18 months, there has been no shortage of stories of embarrassing mistakes, missteps, and slightly unsettling hallucinations.

Peacock subscribers who want to watch daily highlight videos will be able to choose the Olympic events they are most interested in and the type of highlights they want to watch, including viral clips, gold medalists, finals and more.

From there, the Peacocks' AI machine gets to work extracting the most noteworthy moments each night and assembling them into a neat, customized package, with Michaels' recreated voice over the reel. (A human performs quality control checks on the AI ​​highlight reels.)

NBCUniversal officials said they expect 7 million variations of customized highlights throughout the game, which will be displayed in the Peacock app for registered users.

Brian Roberts, chairman of Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, showed a new clip from Al Michaels at an event introducing AI-Al (officially known as “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock”).

Roberts said the idea came from a meeting a few months ago between Comcast and NBCUniversal executives discussing, “What can we do with AI? How can we use it purely for fun and for good?”

After giving his demonstration, Roberts added that we strive to invent and innovate, and try to develop better things time and time again.

The Olympics come at an important time for NBCUniversal. Peacock lost nearly $3 billion last year and lags far behind rivals like Netflix and Disney+ in total subscribers. But the streaming service has seen big subscriber gains over the past year and has relied on sports for that growth: In January, Peacock aired NFL playoff games exclusively for the first time.

The Olympics, which begin July 26, will present an entirely different test for the company. In addition to daytime and primetime coverage on NBC and an array of cable networks, Peacock will play a key role in the company's Olympics coverage, streaming all of the Olympic events.

Peacock president Kelly Campbell called the new AI tool a breakthrough, and said in an interview that if it works, it could soon be implemented on the streaming platform in other ways, such as having Andy Cohen's AI recap Bravo shows.

“For me, this version is something I want to do with every sporting event or show that airs on Peacock. It's something that really differentiates us. We're in a sea of ​​similar things, so to have something that actually sets us apart is really nice,” she said.

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