IBM uses AI to serve up Wimbledon highlights
Watson's at it again helping to create two-minute highlights of matches during tennis' biggest and oldest tournament.
Too busy to spend hours watching Wimbledon champ Andy Murray try to win back-to-back titles against the likes of past winners Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic? IBM thinks it can help within a matter of minutes.
Using its ubiquitous Watson artificial intelligence platform, the tech giant's research and iX teams are now curating the biggest sights and sounds from matches to create "Cognitive Highlights," which will be seen on Wimbledon's digital channels.
The AI platform will literally take key points from the tennis matches (like a player serving an ace at 100 mph), fans' cheers and social media content to help create up to two-minute videos. The two-week tourney at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, complete with a Google Doodle to celebrate Wimbledon's 140th anniversary, began Monday.
IBM's new Wimbledon highlights package comes about three months after experimenting with the system during The Masters, one of golf's biggest tournaments. Using AI, highlights featuring golfer Sergio Garcia's dramatic win were created from video, audio, and text and sent to a team of producers who quickly edited and added the pieces to an interactive dashboard.
At Wimbledon, the process will save editors and producers precious time sorting through clips, said John Smith, a multimedia manager at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center.
"With golf, there's a lot of action happening at different holes and similarly in tennis, there's so much play going on beyond Centre Court." he said. "We want the fans to see tennis in a unique way."
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