With a spectacular opening ceremony featuring pyrotechnics, light shows and dazzling live performances along the river Seine, the Paris Olympics 2024 has just begun. The world witnessed a fleet of boats carrying athletes from around the world along the Seine, as varied artists welcomed them in dazzling performances on rooftops, bridges and banks, and the Olympic rings lighting up at the Eiffel Tower. The opening ceremony is nothing short of what the French Capital had promised - the greatest show on Earth in open air.
Talk about how athletes will battle it out in Paris to bring home the gold medals and how the French Capital is making every effort to make it a unique experience for all, let us explore how this 33rd edition, running from 26 July to 11 August, is going to bring revolution in sports globally with its aspiration of integrating technological evolution.
A tech-forward edition of Olympics
Unlike the other historical editions, the Paris 2024 Olympics is poised to establish a precedent for future editions. This universal event with a worldwide presence, true to its moniker, has brought together 206 countries from across the continents to partake in celebrating a century of change through tech-forward sports and games. The Paris Olympics 2024 has the technological revolution to thank for in materializing a transformative event, setting a benchmark for the world of sports. This edition can be rightfully termed as the gold standard considering its innovation and sustainability agenda focused on integrating deeper artificial intelligence.
In its ambition statement, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) lays out its intention to accelerate positive change in sports globally by incorporating AI potential. This initiative is targeted to achieve excellence, fairness and equal access to sports, universality and solidarity, and to maintain peace and unity in diversity, all the while mitigating risks. IOC had earlier this year published its Olympic AI Agenda that listed the purpose areas of AI integration including game optimization, minimizing human bias and talent detection as the major goals.
Exploring the AI Integration in the Paris Olympics 2024
The Paris Olympics is indeed the first of its kind given the extensive integration of AI, making it not just a sporting extravaganza but a technological paragon, setting a precedent for the future of sports. From rendering groundbreaking viewer experiences to 3D athlete tracking (3DAT), IOC is going all out on embracing the power of AI technology. Let us explore the multiple applications of AI in the Paris Olympics 2024, throwing light on how technology is going to shape the future of sports.
Enhanced Athlete training and performance
One of the most impactful results of the AI tech integration is brought by Intel's remarkable 3DAT (3D Athlete Training), offering enhanced training and performance of the athletes. This technology is powered by AI for extracting and analysing athlete's movements like posture, velocity, and acceleration. It tracks about 21 points across the athlete's body and offers biomechanical insights necessary for coaches to look into during training and improve performances accordingly. The AI integration has also allowed the designing of athletes' custom-built shoes and clothing, identifying optimum nutrition, working on potential stress points, personalized training schedules, etc. In the future, this ease of individual data collection powered by AI will help coaches in identifying talents, ultimately resulting in sports becoming more equitable.
Athlete365- AI Powered Chat Service
This platform has been designed and developed in partnership with Intel to support the sports community with full and easy accessibility to offers, learning courses, content, and support from anywhere. Athletes in the Paris Olympics 2024 will be given access to unique features in this app such as access to personalised game-time, information on services available at games time, exciting offers in the Olympic Village, Airbnb, information on the transport options, etc.
Athletes in the Olympics will also have access to chat services powered by retrieval augmented generation and generative AI. The chatbot will help athletes with quick FAQs like Rule 50 regulations, social media guidelines, and anti-doping rules. Athletes can rely on this tool to navigate the Olympic Village.
The Athlete365 app offers a unique way for Olympians to connect to their networks, meet their IOC AC and their entourage commission representatives, and also access global athlete community news and information.
Augmenting Broadcasting and Viewer Experience
The Paris Olympics 2024 is indeed revving up the world of sports telecasts with AI integration. Broadcasting partners are integrating AI extensively to enhance the viewing experience for people watching from home. NBC Universal, one of the broadcasting partners, broadcasts highlights powered by AI - Peacock wherein narration of the game action is proffered in a cloned voice of Sportscaster Al Michaels. The official Olympics Broadcasting Services (OBS) is using cloud platforms OBS Cloud partnered with Alibaba to ensure enhanced workflows during live broadcasts. This easy-to-use software allows users to transmit contents of the Olympic games over the cloud significantly cutting down carbon footprints arising out of on-site infrastructures. The OBS cloud is compatible with multiple operating systems like Windows, Linux and Mac.
Another remarkable tech-forward feature of the Olympics is the AI-powered multi-camera replay systems by Alibaba, for compelling replays from multiple camera angles. The incorporation of smarter stroboscopic tools for efficient tracking of the athlete's movements in diving and athletics again is another fine instance.
The Olympic Games' official timekeeper Omega is also equally committed to revolutionising the Paris Olympics 2024 by leveraging computer vision cameras powered by AI to deliver accurate event results and to correspond directly to the judges with detailed information on the performance and movements of the athletes. Viewers are offered a more immersive viewing and tracking of athlete's position in games like road cycling, marathon, canoe sprint, etc.
Social Media & Online Monitoring Tools
This initiative by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is indeed a fine example of taking the game forward to a safe and progressive space. The IOC is employing an AI-powered tool to keep check of online abuse aimed at Olympians on social media platforms. The AI tool will monitor social media accounts and in the event of detecting any abusive message, it will be flagged automatically. This platform will enable athletes to protect themselves against online abuse in future games.
Efficient Event Management with Digital Twins
IOC has resorted to the deployment of "Digital Twins" to ensure sustainability and environmental-friendly features of the Olympic Games. With its target to make the Paris Olympics 2024 the most environmental friendly in the history of the Olympics, the IOC deploys the digital twins to ensure efficient utilisation of energy and monitoring of energy consumption across the multiple game venues. In its effort to ensure a smarter and more efficient operation of the event, the IOC has been accumulating operational data. Atos is delegated to be the leader in managing 15 tech partners for full connectivity and securing sites.
Those are some of the top observations of the massive tech integrations that are gracing the Paris Olympics 2024 with a firm belief that it will bring massive shifts and improvements in the future of games and sports. The world of sports can look forward to easy identification of next-generation Olympians by use of AI-powered technology. While all these multifaceted applications of AI technologies of the Paris Olympics indicate the revolution of the games, the IOC is vocal about its commitment and primary focus on athletics.
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