What happened in Sports AI this week?
- From wiretapping to geolocation data collection, AI mass surveillance for the Paris Olympics draws more privacy concerns. The surveillance plans to meet the Olympic’s risks, including controversial use of experimental AI video surveillance, are so extensive that France had to change its laws to make the planned surveillance legal.
- Globally, critics claim that France is using the Olympics as a surveillance power grab and that the government will use this ‘exceptional’ surveillance justification to normalize society-wide state surveillance.
- SailGP are now using AI Cameras that can stop collisions before they happen.
- More and more organisations are turning to AI to safeguard their athletes from online abuse. This week, Sportradar and the ATP tour announced a partnership to do just that. Similar tech was also utilised at Wimbledon, and will be used at the Paris OIympics.
- Electronic Arts used new AI tech to bring 11,000 college football players to digital life for its videogame.
- The Paris Olympics will use Alibaba’s AI-powered energy-saving tool to analyse electricity consumption in competition venues, as the organisers aim to pull off the first carbon-neutral edition of the Games.
- AI-powered cameras will broadcast the Marshall Islands first ever football match. Just one instance of how AI tools like Spiideo’s are democratising smaller teams and nations access to high-level broadcasting.
- Leading tournaments like La Liga are harnessing the power of AI to provide in-depth, real-time player performance and match insights that bring fans closer to the coaching decisions. For instance, their Beyond Stats software portal and Mediacoach, which uses Microsoft’s Azure AI to collect 3.5 million data points in real time per match.
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