Tech in action: Will AI running various aspects of Paris Olympics be awarded a Gold Medal?

By Shirish Nadkarni

Under a steady rain that failed to douse the bubbling enthusiasm of 206 national sporting delegations, an armada of boats sailed slowly down the River Seine, waving flags and with their faces wreathed in smiles, as they celebrated the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics in France’s capital city, Paris, on Friday, July 26.

The broadcast of these pictures, and those of the sporting events to follow until the curtain comes down on the quadrennial Games on August 11, would be done through the International Broadcast Centre (IBC), a highly secure site that would be a temporary hub for broadcasters, and host to an estimated 9,700 journalists from every corner of the globe. 

Before airing on television screens all over the world, the images and sounds of the Paris Olympic Games (July 26 – August 11) and Paralympic Games (August 28 – September 8) are set to transit through the IBC.

Indeed, each edition of the Olympics has had its own IBC, a city of electronics and telecommunications. For the Paris Olympics, the IBC has taken up residence at the Exhibition Centre in Le Bourget, some 10 km north of the capital.

Television studios, commentary booths, technical control rooms … practically everything was designed and proposed by Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), a subsidiary of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that produces magnificent images and sound, thanks to the numerous cameras installed at various Olympic venues. 

OBS is set to produce 11,000 hours of programming. Between 3,800 and 4,000 hours will be devoted to live coverage (all competitions and Olympic ceremonies), the remainder being additional original content (behind-the-scenes coverage of events, athletes’ preparation, and so on). 

“It’s as if you spent a year and three months watching a screen day and night,” explained Oksana Bokalo, Head of Institutional Relations for the IOC’s media subsidiary.

NBC Sports, which won the contract to telecast the Games worldwide, has deployed 40 cameras to capture the action of the unique Opening Ceremony, which was broadcast on TV and streamed in digital format on NBC, Peacock and NBC Olympics. The company is utilising Audio-Technica microphones and broadcast headsets and headphones for its production of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games to capture and monitor audio at events in Paris.

In a groundbreaking initiative, the IOC launched the Olympic AI Agenda in April 2024, setting out the envisioned impact that artificial intelligence (AI) could deliver for the Paris Olympics.

As the Official AI Platform Partner for Paris 2024, Intel has introduced innovative AI elements to help enhance the viewing experience for fans, organisers, athletes and viewers across the globe. 

Automatic highlights generation has been introduced, which will automatically compile key moments from 14 sports and disciplines into tailored highlights reels, based on Media Rights-Holders’ preferences, to personalise their content and further engage their digital and social media audiences.

The automatic highlights inference engine is based on AI models that have been trained with use of the Intel Geti AI software tools, specialising in AI-supported visual content processing. The models have been trained sport by sport with content that was retrieved from the vast Olympic sports video archive.

The development of the Olympic AI Agenda was supported by Worldwide Olympic Partners Intel, OMEGA, Alibaba, Deloitte, and Media Rights-Holders, including Warner Bros., Discovery and NBC.

The IOC is using AI at the Olympic Games Paris 2024, in different areas. For the occupants of the Olympic Village, Intel has created a chatbot for athletes to ask all their questions, such as how to get around Paris, where to eat, and how to get family accreditation. It makes it much easier for athletes to navigate through the Olympic administrative hurdles as the answers are given in real-time.

Another important action taken is to safeguard the athletes from cyber abuse, since the organisers expect about half a billion social media posts during the Games. It will use AI to monitor hundreds of thousands of social media accounts and flag abusive messages for intervention by the relevant authorities.

In addition, athletes who are at the heart of the Olympic Games will also be able to test drive a new chat service that the IOC is providing in partnership with Intel, on the Athlete365 platform. 

“For accredited athletes at the Games, the service is designed to provide easy and quick answers to frequently asked questions on topics such as social media guidelines, anti-doping rules, and Rule 50 regulations,” said Thomas Bach, President of the IOC.

“We are also using AI to make the Olympic Games more sustainable, through a very sophisticated first-ever data capture and energy management system.

“AI is also opening up new ways for talent identification. This project will be launched by us globally in 2025 to live up to the commitment we made that AI in sport must be accessible to everybody.”

In collaboration with the IOC’s commercial and broadcast partners, AI is also being used by IOC subsidiary, OBS during Paris 2024 to improve internal workflows, enhance the viewer experience, enrich storytelling and better explain certain sports events.

Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of OBS, said, “This includes collaborating with Worldwide Olympic Partner, Alibaba, to provide a record number of multi-camera replay systems with AI-powered, high-quality reconstruction in the cloud, to create three-dimensional models and mapping of additional viewpoints across 21 sports and disciplines.

“This will deliver more compelling replays from more camera angles.”

To drive better efficiency for broadcasters, Alibaba Cloud launched OBS Cloud in conjunction with OBS in September 2018, and supported the broadcast coverage of the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Games.

The implementation of OBS Cloud provides an alternative to heavy investment for Media Rights-Holders and the host cities, as Olympic Games-related content can be transmitted leveraging the cloud, effectively reducing the carbon footprint. AI is also being used to create highlights videos in multiple formats and languages during the Games. 

At the Paris Olympics, OMEGA has been officiating as the Official Timekeeper — for the 31st time! Working with OMEGA, OBS expects to unlock the power of AI to deliver faster, more relevant, and insightful data during the Olympic Games. 

For example, intelligent stroboscopic analysis across diving, athletics and artistic gymnastics will enable viewers to better understand the movements and biomechanics of the athletes. In addition, in diving, OBS and OMEGA will use AI to generate enhanced data graphics, providing a new set of data on each athlete’s performance in the air and when entering the water. 

AI-based motion tracking technology will also help commentators and viewers keep track of athletes’ positions during canoe sprint, marathon, race walks, cycling road (road race and time trial), cycling mountain bike, marathon swimming, rowing, sailing and triathlon.

There are also behind-the-scenes applications of AI that will pave the way for more efficient planning of the Olympic Games in the future. For example, the energy consumption at Paris 2024 will be monitored in real time, and the captured data will be used to plan future Games.

“We started gathering various operational data as far back as 2020, to look at how we can make the management of the Olympic Games more efficient,” explained IOC chief Bach.

“For planning, we are now working with our partner, Intel, using the concept of digital twinning, or digital representations of venues so we can foresee, for example, where we would need power, where we would need to place cameras, and if there could be any accessibility issues — all without needing to be on site every time.

“Using these digital twins of the Games venues, we can change the way we organise the Games in future.”