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.
A TV cameraman has developed a program called Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock that will feature a vocabulary of seven million different variations of famous commentator Al Michaels’s language, culled from his many years at NBC. The idea itself is at least interesting, but will computers 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, for the first time in the history of television, will use an artificial intelligence version of the voice of sports commentator Al Michaels during key moments of the Summer Olympics in Paris. The neural network developed by the TV giant’s programmers will use 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 ground and look for the most relevant phrases of 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. Moreover, it made the greatest impression on Michaels himself.
“Honestly, it was amazing. It was amazing. And a little scary,” the commentator said on NBC News. One might say that Al was scared because of the possibility of losing his job. However, NBC separately emphasized that the AI’s work will not affect Michaels’s 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 gain, 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.
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2024-07-04 23:29:14
