NBC Will Debut an A.I. Al Michaels for the Paris Olympics

Al Michaels is one of the most famous voices in the history of American sports. While he calls NFL games for Amazon these days, he still holds an emeritus role at NBC, the network that will broadcast the 2024 Paris Olympics. On Wednesday NBC announced that Michaels would be involved in their Olympics coverage, but not as an announcer. Instead, they are using artificial intelligence to have the broadcaster's voice narrate highlights for Peacock subscribers.

This sounds horrible. No, not the actual technology, but the very idea that NBC would try this. It's just Spotify's DJ with a more famous voice, saving you the trouble of scrolling through archery highlights. NBC has announced that it will use A.I. to recreate Al Michaels’ voice for custom recaps during the 2024 Olympics.Who asked for this? The answer is pretty obviously no one and yet here it is. On the long list of unnecessary uses of A.I., this is up there and that's without considering the, Michaels called the A.I. "astonishing" and "amazing," but who cares? Just because Al Michaels agrees that the Al Michaels voice sounds like Al Michaels doesn't mean it should exist.

If you think viewers are so desperate to hear his voice, just put him on the broadcast. Let him host a highlights show. It doesn't matter how much this actually sounds like Al Michaels because it's not. And now that NBC has the technology, how far can we be from them using it to call an actual live sporting event? Will they even wait until, well, you know...

It probably shouldn't be surprising that a company would do something like this, but it's still a shock to the senses. Just let people watch sports. Let real humans tell them what's happening.Stephen Douglas is a Senior Writer on the Breaking & Trending News Team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in journalism and media since 2008, and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports.

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“It Was Astonishing”: How NBC Convinced Al Michaels to Embrace His AI Voice for Olympics CoverageThe network will use an artificial clone of the legendary broadcaster’s voice to narrate its daily recaps of the summer event. “It was not only close,” he says of the technology, “it was almost 2% off perfect.”
Source: VanityFair - 🏆 391. / 55 Read more »

Welcome to the future, where AI-generated Al Michaels reads you personalized Olympic recapsWill Shanklin has been writing about gadgets, tech and their impact on humanity since 2011. Before joining Engadget, he spent five years creating and leading the mobile technology section for New Atlas. His work has also appeared on SlashGear, TechRadar, Digital Trends, AppleInsider, Android Central, HuffPost and others.
Source: engadget - 🏆 276. / 63 Read more »