‘Insightful, Engaging Experience’: IBM Bringing AI Platform To U.S. Open

NYSJ Sports-Entertainment Business News Service

August 15, 2023: With all the reality that surrounds the U.S. Open Grand Slam, organizers are now adding some Artificial Intelligence.

IBM and the U.S. Tennis Assn. today unveiled digital fan features to appear on USOpen.org and the U.S. Open app, including AI-generated spoken commentary.

The IBM watsonx powered AI Commentary “utilizes models built, trained, and deployed with watsonx, IBM's AI and data platform.”

IBM said the feature is “designed to give fans a more insightful and engaging experience when catching up on key moments from the tournament.”

Also new at this year's U.S. Open will be IBM watsonx powered AI Draw Analysis.

This inaugural platform for the U.S. Open “utilizes both structured and unstructured data from IBM Power Index & Likelihood to Win to project the level of advantage or disadvantage of all players in the singles draw.”

"Fans accessing the U.S. Open digital experiences this year will be able to experience every singles match, across all 17 courts, with detailed audio narration and captions accompanying each video — thanks to the power of IBM's watsonx generative AI, specifically trained on the language of tennis," Jonathan Adashek, IBM svp-communications and marketing, said via the company.

"The AI Commentary feature was developed based on the watsonx enterprise-ready data and AI platform, designed to enable businesses to accelerate generative AI work by leveraging foundation models and machine learning in one place, with their own data."

According to IBM, to implement the IBM watsonx powered AI Commentary, “experts from IBM iX, the experience design partner within IBM Consulting, worked with the USTA to leverage foundation models within watsonx to build and train AI models in the unique language of tennis.

“Operating across a hybrid cloud infrastructure enabled by Red Hat OpenShift, generative AI built on these foundation models was applied to produce commentary with varied sentence structure and vocabulary to make the clips informative and engaging.”

Regarding IBM watsonx powered AI Draw Analysis, each player will receive an IBM AI Draw Analysis at the start of the tournament, which will be updated daily as the tournament progresses and players are eliminated.

Every draw is ranked, allowing fans to click into individual matches and see the projected difficulty of their draw and potential opponents.

"Delivering a digital fan experience that showcases every key moment and storyline from the US Open is always our top priority, and IBM's development leadership continually enables our fans to connect with the US Open in deeper ways every year," Brian Ryerson, USTA senior director, digital strategy, said via the organization.

"We're particularly excited this year for fans to experience IBM's AI commentary with watsonx for all Singles Highlights, providing deeper insights into our video highlights than ever before.

“Additionally, with the watsonx powered AI Draw Analysis fans can easily visualize each player's potential opponents and highlight their complete path to the finals allowing greater insight into each round's potential match ups."

Also in preparation for the U.S. Open, the U.S. Open and Tiffany & Co. have signed a multi-year partnership renewal.

Mount Sinai Health System has also renewed its alliance and will continue to be the U.S. Open's official hospital and medical services provider through 2026; the partnership began in 2013,

As it has for the past 37 years, Tiffany & Co. will craft featured U.S. Open trophies, including the keepsake trophies for the men’s and women’s singles champions.

For the first time, Tiffany & Co. will oversee on-site, immediate hand-engraving of both the men’s and women’s singles keepsake trophies. Each singles champion will now be able to leave the Open with their engraved, keepsake trophy in-hand.

The 2023 U.S. Open is scheduled for Aug. 28-Sept. 10 in the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, New York (ESPN, Tennis Channel).

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