2017 US Open to offer cognitive highlights through IBM AI
Details
Michelle Clancy
| 31 August 2017

Aiming to generate match and player highlights automatically for tennis fans at the leading tennis tournament, the 2017 US Open is to deploy cognitive artificial intelligence (AI) media solutions from IBM.

Newly launched, IBM Watson Media comprises a suite of AI-powered solutions on the IBM Cloud that analyse images, video, language, sentiment and tone. Combining this with IBM's video capabilities, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) will be using one of the first solutions available through IBM Watson Media, called Cognitive Highlights.

Cognitive Highlights can identify the match's most important moments by analysing statistical tennis data, sounds from the crowd and reactions of players, using both action and facial expression recognition. The system then ranks the shots from seven US Open courts and auto-curates the highlights, which simplifies the video production process and ultimately positions the USTA team to scale and accelerate the creation of cognitive highlight packages.

Each day, the USTA will post a ‘Highlight of the Day’, as ranked by Watson, on its Facebook page. Fans that ‘favourite’ players on the US Open apps will receive real-time push notification alerts about those players' highlights. And, fans on iOS 10 can also play the highlights within the lock screen.

On the player bio page, video highlights will be available across all of the USTA's digital platforms, and they’ll be available to fans on site in the player's lounge and in the fan-facing IBM Watson Experience on the plaza near Court 9.

"The US Open is packed with so much action across so many courts that even the fastest video team is challenged to keep pace with what's happening," said Noah Syken, IBM VP of sports & entertainment partnerships. "To meet that challenge, Watson is now watching the matches alongside the USTA to help bring fans closer to the best moments across the courts shortly after they happen. We're seeing this technology come to life through tennis, but the entire IBM Watson Media portfolio has the potential to impact many industries."

Leading up to the US Open, IBM's cognitive highlights technology was tested as a proof of concept at this year's Masters Tournament, and also was served as part of the content production system at Wimbledon.