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Episode: AI Use Case Series: How AI is being Applied in Sports [AI Today Podcast]

Author: AI & Data Today
Duration: 00:06:36

Episode Shownotes

AI is being used in many industries and sports is no exception. AI is being applied to enhance all areas of sports from the athlete to the fan, the coach to the referee, and even in judging athletic competition. In this episode of AI Today hosts Kathleen Walch and Ron

Schmelzer discuss how AI is being applied in professional sports. Continue reading AI Use Case Series: How AI is being Applied in Sports [AI Today Podcast] at Cognilytica.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
The AI Today podcast, produced by Cognolitica, cuts through the hype and noise to identify what is really happening now in the world of artificial intelligence.

00:00:10 Speaker_00
Learn about emerging AI trends, technologies, and use cases from Cognolitica analysts and guest experts.

00:00:22 Speaker_02
Hello, and welcome to the AI Today podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Mulch.

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And I'm your host, Ron Schmelzer.

00:00:28 Speaker_01
And you know, there's been a lot of conversation about AI, as it's, of course, it's everybody's conversation, but it's also people are really now thinking about how AI is going to impact them in particular, and have an impact on their lives.

00:00:42 Speaker_01
For a very long time, especially even here at the AI Today podcast, we were focusing on topics like what is AI? Does it matter? We were focusing on sort of more general topics. around methods of applying best practices of AI, AI failure series.

00:00:57 Speaker_01
We talked about, of course, trust with the AI, all those things. They're all still very important, and we'll keep talking about those things.

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But a while ago, I think maybe like a year or two ago, we had a use case series where we talked about how AI was being implemented in specific industries and specific applications.

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Now those conversations are coming up again because people are saying, well, I know how to do AI, especially generative AI. And now I really want to know how this is going to impact me and my job. So guess what?

00:01:24 Speaker_01
We're going to come back and revisit our use case series and look at how AI is impacting all these different industries.

00:01:32 Speaker_02
Exactly. Yeah. You know, it might have even been closer to four years ago that we, I know that we initially had this, it feels like a year, but you know, because every year feels like multiple years.

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And this was also well before generative AI hit the scene. So we said, let's go back. They were very popular series. And we said, let's go back and revisit this and talk about how AI is being applied in a lot of different industries.

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And we like to do this because even if it's not your industry, our listeners have told us that they get a lot of value from this.

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They can see how other industries are doing it and maybe give them some ideas on how they can implement it for themselves within their own industry or even just get little nuggets. of information. So we're excited to restart this AI use case series.

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And for today's podcast, we're going to be talking about AI's impact in sports and how it really is enhancing this. We've also had some great podcasts, I'm going to link to them in the show notes.

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from folks within the sports industry talking firsthand about how their sports teams are using AI. I think it was the St. Louis Blues that we had an interview with.

00:02:40 Speaker_02
So I will link to that in the show notes, cause it really is interesting, but that was many years ago. So maybe we'll need to revisit that.

00:02:46 Speaker_02
So, but again, we wanted to spend some time talking about how AI is helping with sports and, you know, in particular professional sports and kind of that whole experience. So first we want to talk about how it's enhancing the athlete.

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When it comes to competitive sports, anybody that watches it, or maybe some of our listeners have played some competitive sports, you know that the difference between winning and losing really does come down to the smallest of margins, and it really matters.

00:03:12 Speaker_02
So what we've seen with AI is that it can help analyze and enhance performance with detailed analytics and also provide highly personalized training plans. Now, we know that, you know, not every athlete is going to need the exact same

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performance plan. And before AI, it was really, you know, hard to give all these hyper-personalized plans. But now we're seeing that. And we're also seeing it used to help analyze movements and the opposing team.

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And no longer do you have to go back and kind of watch those reels and footage post-event. It's able to now do it during the actual game so that you can make these changes in real time, which is very exciting.

00:03:54 Speaker_01
Yeah, I mean, we just came off the Olympics. So for those of you who are listening to us in 2024, this was recorded in August. So yeah, I mean, the Olympics just happened. And if you were watching, you also saw a lot more use of AI during these games.

00:04:10 Speaker_01
One, of course, for things like trying to show more creative visualizations for viewers on things like 3D, you know, the opponents or maybe even, that's less AI and more VR and AI, 3D and things like that.

00:04:24 Speaker_01
But people were doing things like recognition, image recognition, and trying to do things like trying to understand the statistics of what was happening from that performance and predictive analytics perspective.

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But for an AI perspective, people are trying to use AI in sports really as this augmented intelligence tool to really help coaches and players make more strategic decisions. But also even the referees and the judges, they're taking advantage of AI.

00:04:51 Speaker_01
So they're looking for AI to help even make better calls on the field, to help with more accurate and fair scoring. I don't think that would have helped with breakdancing, to be totally honest.

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I think that was its own little unique world where I think computers wouldn't have understood it at all. But in any case, we did see AI being used.

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As a matter of fact, there is the AI-assisted judging support system, JSS, which was developed by Fujitsu in collaboration with the International Gymnastics Federation that uses high-definition cameras to capture and analyze the movements of gymnasts in 3Ds.

00:05:26 Speaker_01
And the idea is to use this impartial judging system because I think people have said that sports like gymnastics have judges who have, well, their own opinions about things. They may be partial.

00:05:36 Speaker_01
You might say some of it may be preferential to different countries, perhaps, or to different gymnasts in particular, or they like certain styles, or they like certain things, and they just have their own methods, and people are looking for a more impartial way of doing judging in sports that do have that sort of more subjective decision-making.

00:05:56 Speaker_01
in judging. Well, it's not like a race where whoever crosses the line first wins. That's pretty obvious. And you might have high-speed photography that helps you, but you don't need AI for that.

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But if you're trying to do judging where you're trying to help human judges with more precise scoring,

00:06:11 Speaker_01
insights or doing things like looking at the database and comparing the movements against the database of all the recognized gymnastic elements to see what they're actually doing. Because I don't even know how they count how many flips people do.

00:06:22 Speaker_01
That's just crazy that there was like two and a half into this. It's hard for a human to count that. So maybe they can have systems that automatically do that. And maybe the AI system can generate its own score.

00:06:32 Speaker_01
Of course, humans make the final decisions. But maybe, as I said, this is an augmented capacity here. We're starting to see more of that.

00:06:40 Speaker_01
And of course, we'll probably see more of that in sports, not just at the professional level, but at the amateur level when maybe there aren't enough judges to actually judge the competitions.

00:06:50 Speaker_02
Exactly. Yeah, it is really exciting. We talk a lot about this idea of augmented intelligence, where you're not replacing the human, but help the human do their job better.

00:06:58 Speaker_02
And this is a really great example of that, because at the end of the day, yes, you need those human judges.

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But it does do things like help humans reduce errors, provide more consistency in evaluations, and help eliminate some of that human emotion in scoring. As much as you try to be impartial, People do have favorites. People are human. People have biases.

00:07:20 Speaker_02
And so this is just one more data point to help with that. And it was really exciting to watch the Olympics, if anybody listened, or watch the Olympics, any of our listeners, and to see this technology in use. So that's on the athlete's side.

00:07:35 Speaker_02
But then what makes professional sports so engaging? Well, fan involvement, right? Definitely teams know this and they have decided that they want the fan engagement to be enhanced with AI. And that was actually talked about in our podcast with St.

00:07:51 Speaker_02
Louis Blues. So definitely listen to that if you're interested. But, you know, again, so it can help athletes, coaches, referees.

00:07:58 Speaker_02
We talked about a few of those ways that it's helping, but it's also really having a positive impact on fans and their engagement with teams, not just during the game or the sport, but also, you know, not just on the field, but off the field as well.

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So now AI-enhanced experiences really allow fans to immerse themselves in the game like never before, really with this idea of now being able to hyper-personalize the fan's experience.

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Maybe I care about something that's different than the person that's sitting next to me in the stadium, and now sports teams are really able to drive you know, that individual level of engagement, which just helps overall with the entire experience.

00:08:39 Speaker_02
So these AI-driven platforms are able to analyze fan behavior and also specific preferences to now deliver that personalized content and recommendations. So now fans can have this tailored experience, and it's also more enjoyable for them.

00:08:53 Speaker_02
And we've seen that AI is now doing things like suggesting highlights or articles or even merchandise based on fans' previous interactions and you know, the engagement that they have. We know that, you know, micro content now is very popular.

00:09:08 Speaker_02
So fans may want to see different clips. And now we're able to do that or able to see different highlight reels where before we weren't able to do that because that was a very manual process that needed to get done.

00:09:19 Speaker_02
Now, with the help of AI, it is making these personalized experiences possible.

00:09:25 Speaker_01
Yeah. So you can get your own personalized clip of all the different sports that you care about in a format that you like, which is nice. Of course, you know, generative AI is everywhere. So no surprise.

00:09:36 Speaker_01
It was there at the Olympics, but it's there in all the sports now.

00:09:39 Speaker_01
So chatbots, of course, it's almost like to say that chatbots just come with the territory now because they're so easy to implement that you can have a conversation with the system to help with any sort of fan engagement.

00:09:50 Speaker_01
Like tell me about this player. or tell me about this sport, or I don't understand this rule, or can you please explain what just happened in the game?" That's actually kind of cool, if you think about it.

00:10:00 Speaker_01
Like, you have this little companion you can talk to, so if you're watching some sport you never really experienced, like handball, or, you know, you watched that, like, there was this kayak cross-racing, which looked crazy.

00:10:12 Speaker_01
Nobody understood that one. You can, like, talk to the chatbot, and it can explain what's happening, what's going on. And it even allows you to interact with the teams themselves.

00:10:20 Speaker_01
So these chatbots, you can communicate with the teams, you can communicate with different sports brands, and you can have these AI-driven tools who can provide all sorts of tasks about, of course, helping you with tickets or helping you with whatever is needed from a customer perspective and real-time updates on games and events and all sorts of cool stuff.

00:10:37 Speaker_01
So AI is really helping in these sort of ways to really deepen that level of engagement, I think is no surprise because, hey, I know we're talking about sports and you might think, well, this is really just about entertainment.

00:10:48 Speaker_01
This is something trivial. But sports is a huge business. It's a huge industry in and of itself.

00:10:54 Speaker_01
And there's many things, as Kathleen mentioned, that we learn from the industry of sports that we can apply to our own businesses, even if we are not necessarily sports involved.

00:11:04 Speaker_02
Absolutely. You know, fan engagement can equal customer engagement. And so maybe it's not, you know, exactly the same way.

00:11:12 Speaker_02
But think about how are these sports teams engaging with their fans and keeping them, you know, excited and energized, even in the offseason. or even when they're not actually at the game. And how can you do that for your organization as well?

00:11:26 Speaker_02
And so we always like to learn from others. I know that many of our listeners also really ask for that a lot because they want to see how other people are using and adopting AI, especially in many different industries.

00:11:38 Speaker_02
Maybe even their organization, they want to know what their peers and competitors are doing or you know, just to try and get that buy-in. People want to see those examples. And so that's definitely what this use case series is going to be doing.

00:11:53 Speaker_02
So if you haven't done so, make sure to subscribe to AI Today so you can get notified of all of our upcoming use case. podcasts.

00:12:00 Speaker_02
We're definitely going to be digging into a lot of different topics, and if you have any topics that you'd like us to dig into, reach out. You can find us both on LinkedIn, Kathleen Mulch and Ron Schmelzer.

00:12:11 Speaker_02
We're very active on LinkedIn, so please do reach out, or you can also go to aitoday.live. Like this episode and want to hear more? With hundreds of episodes and over 3 million downloads, check out more AI Today podcasts at aitoday.live.

00:12:28 Speaker_02
Make sure to subscribe to AI Today if you haven't already on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, Amazon, or your favorite podcast platform. Want to dive deeper and get resources to drive your AI efforts further?

00:12:41 Speaker_02
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Check it out at aitoday.live slash list. This sound recording and its contents are copyright by Cognolitica. All rights reserved. Music by Matsu Gravas. As always, thanks for listening to AI Today, and we'll catch you at the next podcast.