2023-07-01 07:23:33
When you go to the official Wimbledon website starting this Monday to find out what time the next matches are played or open the application to follow a ball-by-ball match, you should know something: all the information you receive will be generated with artificial intelligence. The statistics, the summaries, the videos and even the stories that arrive from London will be the work and grace of digital tools created by IBM. What’s more: the AI will be encouraged to make predictions. The followers, then, will have the possibility to follow a player, compare him with the rivals and know his chances of winning. The future has come to the sport and it looks like an episode of Black Mirror.
These digital tools were already used a little over two months ago at the Augusta Masters, one of the most prestigious golf tournaments on the circuit. To venture into forecasts, for example, artificial intelligence analyzed 120,000 shots from all players over the past six years. The margin of error is reduced to nothing.
In search of future cracks. Since the famous image of Pope Francis with an inflated jacket went viral, artificial intelligence has become practically a daily topic and GPT Chat has become a trend. The AI knows no limits: the very disrespectful one even dared to record an Oasis album with eight songs that the Gallagher brothers never composed. In this context, which can exceed the fantasy of the most imaginative screenwriter, the sport might not be left out. Like the ball, the business keeps rolling and adds similar technological advances.
At the World Cup in Qatar, the Argentine company Globant presented a system called The Perfect Shot, which records the execution of a free kick and defines how close or far it is from being “perfect”. The algorithm was fed with more than a hundred hours of videos with the best free throw kickers in the world.
One area where AI is already working is in recruiting promising young soccer players. In addition to the expert with a clinical eye who can detect a future crack in a suburban pasture, technology offers complex tools to choose the best candidate.
In December of this year, the MLS, yes, the league where Leo Messi will play, will launch an application so that all the teams can take a survey among thousands of potential talents and give them the chance to take a test. The app, called aiScout, analyzes the conditions of future soccer players and their level of efficiency, and links them with those looking for a player with certain characteristics.
Monchi, former goalkeeper and sports director of Sevilla for more than twenty years, is one of the pioneers in the use of AI in the Spanish club. In principle, he applied tools to sign players. Every year he started with a list of 3,500 soccer players and with the help of technology he refined it according to the wishes of the coaches. The experiment did not go badly at all: Sevilla won six European titles in the last 14 years.
Everything under control. Another instance in which the application of artificial intelligence is growing is in training. Thanks to digital tools, it is possible to measure the performance of athletes, develop strategies and prevent injuries.
In tennis, for example, through a combination of cameras and sensors, the speed, spin and location of the ball on a serve can be measured. This has a direct impact on the strategies that the coaches, the coaching staff and the player can take. There is so much data that can be processed in real time that the result will always be more “objective” than that resulting from the human eye.
Camila Manera, co-founder and data director of the Libro de Pases app, a social network that connects players, agents and soccer clubs, lists the advantages of applying AI in sports: “It saves time and money, facilitates decision-making, allows adding knowledge and opportunities to optimize performance, and create better opportunities for young people”.
Although the irruption of artificial intelligence in sport is not a new phenomenon, it is incipient. The potential of these tools is endless. An athlete might even access a statistical prediction regarding what his rival would do, information that would offer him a great advantage.
Wimbledon’s virtual coverage and apps already used in other sports are just the beginning. Just as until not long ago the fans were dazzled every time a talented kid appeared, it won’t be long before surprises are caused by the new apps.
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