Wimbledon to serve up highlights packages using IBM artificial intelligence technology
The Wimbledon tennis tournament, which starts next week, will use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help compile its highlights packages this year.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club and technology partner IBM said the Watson AI platform had been taught to recognise players’ emotions, which it would combine with an analysis of crowd noise, players’ movements and match data to help compile highlight reels.
Reuters reports that IBM’s Sam Seddon said it was using machine learning to find moments where players had a heightened sense of emotion after a key point or tough rally.
If you’ve got the visual element from the player, and you know that it’s a tight pressure point in the match, then those are the points that you are going to really target in on in the highlights package,” he said.
He said the technology will also analyse the noise of the crowd to gauge its excitement.
“We are listening for the volume of the crowd – if you have got a fantastic rally that noise levels will go up and down during that point,” he said.
“When that is happening, we flag it as particularly interesting.”
Wimbledon was an early adopter of AI, Seddon said, and had widened its uses since it was first deployed in 2015.
This year for example, he said, IBM’s Watson AI technology will power a Wimbledon chatbot service, delivered within Facebook Messenger, that will allow fans access to tailored information on scores, news and players.