For daily highlights of the Olympic Games, NBC’s streaming service Peacock is using an artificial intelligence sound-alike of TV sports broadcaster Al Michaels that “reads” AI-generated text.
I was initially wary of this attention-grabbing AI gimmick. New forms of AI make stuff up sometimes. AI can be dumb as rocks or pointless when used for shopping, tax advice, math homework, news or entertainment.
But A.I. Al Michaels is a rare use of artificial intelligence that I don’t hate. It’s good, actually.
I’ll tell you more about Peacock’s AI-aided Olympics highlight reels and how you can try them, too.
One lesson is that AI is best when it has a narrowly defined task, many restrictions and human help. The Olympics A.I. Al checks those boxes. It’s not trying to do everything — and that’s why it works.
How A.I. Al Michaels works and sounds
Each day during the Olympics, Peacock subscribers can watch a roughly 10-minute video with event highlights tailored to a handful of broad categories you select like “team sports,” “extreme” (think skateboarding and surfing) and viral moments.
NBC says it uses generative AI, the technology behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to create the short introductory text for each section of your event highlights. Then an AI “trained” with audio of the real Al Michaels narrates the AI-written introductory sections.
NBC says people review all of this before you see it. The company said Michaels gave permission for A.I. Al and that he was compensated.
A demonstration video provided by NBC shows its Olympics highlights narrated by an AI sound-alike of Al Michaels. (Video: NBC)
And yes, A.I. Al Michaels sounds pretty much like Al Michaels.
To my ears, the AI-generated Al sounds a bit flatter than real Al, like soda that’s lost some fizz. I’ve also noticed an occasional odd pronunciation or an inhumanly short pause between sentences. Mostly, though, I forgot this was an AI doppelgänger.
You can compare for yourself the voice of real Al Michaels from a CNN interview versus audio we recorded from an A.I. Al-narrated video.
I was surprised, too, that athletes’ names were pronounced correctly. My spell-check balked at tennis star Novak Djokovic and American gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik, the pommel horse hero. A.I. Al breezed through those pronunciations.
There’s nothing novel about sports video highlights. But for people like me who don’t regularly follow fencing, rugby or triathlon, I found it helpful to have the AI-generated Al Michaels explain the highlight clips from those events.
What could possibly go wrong? (Quite a lot.)
Peacock product executive John Jelley said the large volume of material in the daily Olympics highlight reels couldn’t exist without AI.
Nor, Jelley said, could the videos exist without human expertise, including transcripts of NBC’s Olympic broadcasts and the people logging categories of material such as medal-winning performances or behind-the-scenes videos with athletes.
Lots of human labor is often necessary to “train” AI or to intervene to stop mistakes in driverless cars or computerized drive-through ordering. Experts also say generative AI can spout gibberish. It would be a bad look if A.I. Al concocted Olympic results that never happened.
Jelley said the AI-generated text and audio for Peacock’s highlight reels have been accurate and haven’t required much intervention. Staff are making tweaks, particularly to make sure names are pronounced correctly, and to edit the order of words or regenerate an AI audio phrase to make it sound better.
NBC also limited the possibility of mistakes because A.I. Al can’t do much.
This is not a chatbot that you can ask anything and the AI might try to break up your marriage. NBC controls what you see and hear in the highlight videos.
AI researcher Henry Ajder watched A.I. Al and said it’s technically impressive and done ethically with consent from the real Al Michaels and disclosure to viewers that AI is used for the videos.
He said NBC improved its odds of success because this AI isn’t interactive nor reliant on vast and broad reams of online information. A.I. Al is confined to a narrower set of information from the Olympics and prior Al Michaels broadcasts. “This is a good case study in how to do this well,” Ajder said.
We’ll see if features similar to AI-generated Al catch on. The cost, complexity and concerns about AI replacing jobs may limit its use.
This A.I. Al was also a stunt — but one that’s actually fun and useful.
How to try the AI-aided Peacock highlights
First, you need a subscription to the Peacock streaming service, which starts at $7.99 a month for new customers.
From Peacock’s homepage, click on the Olympics tab at the top. Scroll down a bit to find what NBC calls “Your Daily Olympic Recap.”
This option works only if you’re watching Peacock on most popular and relatively up-to-date web browsers or using Peacock’s iPhone and iPad apps. It doesn’t work on Peacock’s apps for Android phones, smart TVs or streaming-connected devices like Roku.