There might be an Artificial Intelligence Olympics in the future, when generative AIs compete to produce the most bizarre texts, movies, and images. Meanwhile, the real Olympics will take place in Paris, France, beginning on July 26. While real athletes will be there, AI will be used to converse with them behind the scenes, assemble highlight reels, and advise viewers which Olympic sport they should, at least in their imaginations, compete in.
Leading Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic Games Office, Sarah Vickers, stated, “Our big focus for these games, which makes sense as it’s really the hot topic right now, is artificial intelligence. As such, we are the official artificial intelligence platform provider for the Olympic Games.”
Vickers and I had a conversation right before her flight to Paris, where she will spend the next two months managing over 100 Intel workers as they develop and implement Intel’s artificial intelligence plan for the Olympics.
In contrast to earlier years, when the company invested in drone intelligence to assist in creating some of the first Olympic drone synchronized flying displays, Intel’s work for the 2024 Paris Olympics will stay grounded and concentrate on a small number of critical areas.
Medaling in chat
Indeed, Intel is powering an Olympic chatbot that will assist over 10,000 athletes in navigating the occasionally perplexing Olympic Village and events with the help of its Gaudi 2 generative AI platform.
Vickers stated to me that it is an LLM specifically designed for athletes and that it will be incorporated into their current Athlete 365 service. It ought to ease athletes’ anxiety by explaining the routine and expectations of the Olympics. “Just understanding all that stuff that they have to search or find in PDFs; putting that in a conversational chatbot for them that’s integrated into an app that they already have and that’s running online as well.”
It may swiftly respond to questions about whether taking a Tylenol before an event could be a sign of doping, or it could just provide the bus schedules for traveling to and from the many sporting sites.
Given that there were 200 nationalities represented among the athletes, I wanted to know if the chatbot was multilingual. Vickers wasn’t sure if it could do so yet. Additionally, there are no specific plans to make the chatbot available to the public, though Vickers believes Intel may try to find a way to expose it to customers who aren’t going to the games.
Regarding the security measures included in the LLM, the chatbot was developed with assistance from Intel’s Responsible AI group. “I don’t think you can stop people from asking crazy questions, but I think you can stop what it responds to and use that to identify that this is something we don’t have the answer to, and then maybe figure that out,” Vickers stated to me.
The bronze in broadcast
Intel AI will sift through event footage on the producer’s and viewer’s behalf to select and display the highlights. If you feel that there are currently too many video highlights available online, consider underappreciated occurrences that might not receive much attention from the media or producers even when they are being taped. It’s difficult to locate a moving picture of his parents supporting him or a highlight reel of a competitor hitting his tenth perfect target in clay pigeon shooting.
Thus, the amount of individuals that Olympics Broadcast Services could have used to make highlights was a constraint on their ability to provide highlights in the past. Their level of automation was low. They tagged a certain amount, but since it was all done by hand, there was only so much that they could publish. With the AI we’re using, we can now create real-time highlights in practically real-time—auto-tagging, for example, in a matter of minutes.”
This will assist in locating and presenting highlight reels based on regions, not only for niche sports but also for smaller nations that cannot afford to send entire broadcast crews. It may be as easy as selecting the sport or sports and the nation, then pressing an export button.
Gold medal skills
Should you be fortunate enough to witness the Olympics, you will witness artificial intelligence in action at the Stade De France, the biggest sports stadium in France that will serve as the Olympic Stadium during the games. Together, Intel and Samsung are providing an AI-driven talent detection system locally. Intel’s cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) will determine which Olympic event a participant is most qualified to compete in by using computer vision and Samsung smartphones and tablets to record them performing a few sports-related tasks.
In order to identify local youth as potential competitors for the Youth Olympic Games, which will be hosted in Senegal in 2026, the two IT businesses piloted this software in Senegal.
“We conducted an exercise with one thousand kids to see what kind of skills they possess. What are their capabilities? And all of that was possible with only a cell phone and extremely little in the way of physical infrastructure,” Vickers added.
Silver in navigation
A wayfinding system that was first created for the visually handicapped is one of the other AI integrations that will help everyone navigate the Olympic Village. The media lounge and village’s overall space usage is also examined using AI.
“You can better manage food and beverage if you consider only the movement of individuals and have a better understanding of occupancy. We now have a better understanding of how to handle transit line management. Just using that information to assist in making wiser choices. The International Olympic Committee, or IOC, is also using that data to aid in future planning.”
The majority of Intel’s AI integrations, typically utilizing Intel Xeon processors, operate in the cloud. Typically, the software is Intel’s Geti apps, which aid in model construction and performance. Vickers informed me that while some AI might operate locally, or on the edge, in gadgets such as Samsung tablets and phones, this isn’t the approach being used for the Olympics.
It should be noted that Intel is not bringing any of this AI to the opening ceremony. All that will be needed for that spectacle is humanity, feeling, and whatever stagecraft the producers can employ; drones, though not provided by Intel, are undoubtedly also in the mix.
