The AI ​​version of Al Michaels will provide Olympic summaries of Peacock

Legendary sportscaster Al Michaels will provide daily, in-person recaps of the Paris Olympics on Peacock – well, Al Michaels’ AI-generated voice will do just that. In practical terms, the effect is very similar to hearing the voice of a sports announcer in a video game like Maddenexcept that it airs lines about real-life sports, which, in this case, means dedicated coverage of the Olympics.

Here’s how it works. To set up what NBC calls “Your Daily Olympic Recap” in the Peacock app, you’ll provide your name (an AI voice can greet a “majority” of people by their first name, NBC says in a press release) and choose up to three types of sports that interest you and up to Two types of highlights (for example, “Top of Competition” or “Top and Trending Moments”). Then, each morning, you’ll get a briefing led by Michaels.

To help guard against potential AI-generated weirdness, NBC says that “a team of NBCU editors will review all content, including audio and clips, to ensure quality and accuracy before recaps are made available to users.” But I still feel like there’s a possibility that someone’s summary could include an AI-generated hallucination spoken out loud in Al Michaels’ voice, like highlighting the wrong athlete or spoiling some unusual result in the sport.

The voice was trained using Michaels’ appearances on NBC, according to the press release, and the experience was built in-house, says NBCUniversal’s John Gilley. the edge In the current situation. “Our internal Peacock team of engineers, product managers, and data scientists developed a proprietary process to integrate, optimize, and validate “Advanced large language model and audio synthesis technology to create this experience.”

At the press demo where I heard the audio, it sounded convincing, but that’s what you’d expect from a demo. The real test will be when you create millions of unique clips — NBC estimates there may be nearly 7 million personality variants in the U.S. during the Games — across dozens of sports, each with their own unique terminology, identifying a range of athletes from around the world. the world.

Peacock summaries led by AI Al Michaels will be available starting July 27 in supported browsers and the iOS and Android Peacock apps. The first edition of the recap will contain highlights from the opening ceremony for everyone, and custom recaps will begin on July 28.

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media. the edgeParent company of ‘.