2024-07-07 10:01:12
Neural network to comment on 2024 Olympics competitions
Artificial intelligence will comment on the Olympics for the first time.
The development of the program raises serious ethical dilemmas.
The Paris Olympics continue to deliver unusual news. A new initiative around the Paris Games is a commentary from a neural network. The largest American television company NBC, which owns the rights to broadcast the Olympics in North America, has taken a bold experiment – part of the broadcasts will be accompanied by a voice stream generated by a neural network.
İdman.biz, citing Sport-Express, reports that the TV operator has developed a program called Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock, which will have a vocabulary of seven million different variations of the famous commentator Al Michaels’s language expressions, taken from his many years of work at NBC. The idea itself is at least interesting, but will the computer eventually deprive us of human commentary?
American commentator to be replaced by artificial intelligence
If you were afraid that neural networks would eventually take away the bread from humans, then, apparently, it was not in vain. Here is another reason for paranoia and futurism: NBC will, for the first time in the history of television, use a version of the voice of sports commentator Al Michaels created by artificial intelligence during key moments of the Summer Olympics in Paris. The neural network developed by the TV giant’s programmers will take as a basis for its work the huge timing of reports from Michaels himself, who has been commenting on the Games for an American audience for several decades. Naturally, there is no point in repeating prepared phrases in advance; the system will try to adapt to what is happening on the sports field and look for the most relevant phrases from Al. It has the ability to generate new verbal constructions and even pronounce words that were not in the original lexicon of the program, but here flaws may already be noticeable.
The system was tested on several test broadcasts, and the experts were satisfied with it. And it made the biggest impression on Michaels himself. “Honestly, it was amazing. It was amazing. And a little scary,” the commentator said on NBC News. One could say that Al was scared because of the chance of losing his job. However, NBC separately emphasized that the AI’s work will not affect Michaels’ contract in any way. He will continue to work in a comfortable mode for himself. Moreover, the company will pay him an increased fee for the use of his voice by the neural network. So, at least financially, Al will not lose. And the viewer will only benefit, it seems. After all, no matter how professional and master Michaels is, at 79 he can no longer spend hours on air like in the past.
Attempts to voice sports video games have been a failure
The American on the couch will receive broadcasts with a voice familiar to him from childhood from morning to night, Michael will get a pension increase, and NBC will test new technologies and get an influx of viewers. It would seem to be a win-win story for everyone! However, there are important questions. The first is how advanced will artificial intelligence be? The neural networks available to the masses like ChatGPT are both amazing and frustrating in their limitations. It is still difficult for them to get rid of the artificiality, and the first association that comes to mind is commentary in sports video games like FIFA or NHL. Before each season or every few seasons, the studio records about 300-400 thousand lines, seemingly for all possible scenarios of what is happening on the field. At least the commentators themselves call the work on the voiceover of sports simulators hellish.
“I was just stunned. I thought I would be left without a voice, without strength, without a family, without the ability to walk, to speak. Well, it was really very difficult. Since it was necessary to voice the entire basic program, there were probably 50 hours. They could count a session only if you sat for 6-8 hours. Well, it was several days of real hell. It happened that you repeat the same phrase seven or eight times. Because the phrase is the same, and at the end: “Manchester City”, “Manchester United”, “Liverpool”, “Newcastle”. It was irritating: 10 English teams, 10 Spanish. Italy, France. You start throwing yourself at the TV,” Konstantin Genich recalled his voice acting experience. However, even such a thorough approach did not help EA Sports create a real analogue of live commentary. In the tenth hour of the game, you understand that the lines are repeated, sound out of place and fall out of context.
With the advent of neural networks, we may lose live commentary
Hearing the same clichés like “you have to hit and score” and “how did he miss from a meter away” for the tenth time, and in game circumstances that are not suitable for the phrases, players are pretty tired of it, so many “fifers” choose internoise. However, let’s even assume that NBC specialists will be able to create a truly interactive product that will adapt to a live picture no worse than a person. In general, this is possible, after all, in Hollywood cinema, they have been “reviving” dead actors through neural networks for several years now. And so well that the average viewer will not even notice the substitution. But here we are faced with another problem. How ethical is this at all? Michaels sold NBC the rights to his voice for 50 years at once — so in theory, no one will forbid the TV company from using it after Al’s death. This is where it really gets scary.
In Russia, the NBC initiative has also generated considerable interest. Online commentators are already writing that they dream of watching the Games in Paris with commentary from Nikolai Ozerov, Vladimir Maslachenko, Nina Eremina, Anna Dmitrieva, Yuri Rozanov and Vasily Utkin. On the one hand, it will be really great. But on the other, aren’t we replacing humans with machines? Are we insulting the memory of these people and their legacy? And in the end, will there be room in the world of neural networks for the live emotions of real journalists? Now we are worried not only about our profession, but also about the final product for consumers. After all, what artificial intelligence can never be taught is to think outside the box and spontaneously produce phrases on air that immediately become part of folklore.
İdman.biz