AI-powered Hole Insights and Spanish-language
AI narration to further connect fans to one of golf's most iconic
events.
ARMONK,
N.Y., April 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM
(NYSE: IBM) and the Masters Tournament today announced several new
fan features coming to the Masters app and Masters.com digital
experience for this year's event. Powered by generative AI
capabilities built from watsonx – IBM's AI and data platform –
fans this year will have access to shot-by-shot Hole Insights
offering detailed, data-driven projections and analysis for each
hole on course. In addition, IBM will release AI-enabled Spanish
language narration as an expansion of its English-language AI
Narration feature debuted in 2023.
These new capabilities – a product of collaboration between
experts from IBM Consulting, and the Masters digital team – aim to
deliver a more personalized and engaging digital viewing experience
for millions of new and existing golf fans around the world
following Masters Tournament action April
11-14.
IBM Hole Insights, joining the "Track Shots" experience on the
2024 Masters.com website and mobile apps, brings together
natural language processing and structured data to generate
detailed breakdowns of current and historical play, as well as
projections of anticipated play, around any given hole,
including:
- Data-driven recaps of how each hole has played daily and
throughout the 2024 Tournament (e.g., "The 14th hole
has played difficult today, with 25% of shots resulting in
bogies.").
- Projections of how each hole might play, based on past and
current performance data (e.g., "The 9th hole is
projected to be the third most difficult hole today.").
- Historical insights into how each hole has played, based on
eight years of Tournament data – including more than 170,000 shots
– and ball position on course (e.g., "Shots historically hit in
this location have an 82% chance of resulting in a
birdie.").
Hole Insights marks the first time that fans can receive
insights based on live Tournament shots directly on the Masters
website.
IBM is also debuting the next chapter in its AI sports narration
story – Spanish language narration. IBM and the Masters first
introduced AI Narration last year to provide automated audio and
closed caption commentary for on-demand highlight videos of every
shot on every hole – approximately 20,000 over the course of the
Tournament. Now, fans will have access to the same narration in
both Spanish audio and closed caption forms. Fans following
highlight videos on 2024 Masters app and website can use the
English and Spanish narration interchangeably and simultaneously,
as desired. For example, watching Tournament play while receiving
English audio narration, with Spanish closed captions overlaid, and
vice versa.
Powering this new feature is a combination of generative AI and
large language models built on watsonx. Moving beyond simple
English-to-Spanish translation, a team of IBM engineers and subject
matter experts through a process known as few shot learning trained
the AI model to natively "understand" and "communicate" in Spanish
to deliver authentic audio and closed captioning narration
experiences to Spanish-speaking fans.
"The generative AI power of watsonx is enabling IBM and the
Augusta National Golf Club to co-create technology solutions that
bring the magic of the Masters to life for millions of fans around
the world," said Jonathan Adashek,
Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at IBM.
"From training and tuning to monitoring and maintenance,
watsonx manages the entire lifecycle of the AI models used to
create features such as AI Narration and Hole Insights. These are
the same capabilities we're applying to our work with businesses
across industries as they aim to build better customer care
experiences, reach new levels of productivity, and make more
informed, data-driven business decisions."
For more than 25 years, the Masters has worked closely with IBM
to guide their journey of digital transformation, from design and
user interface to the back-end systems that transform Masters data
into compelling and approachable golf insights. Today's newly
announced Hole Insights and Spanish AI narration features join
ongoing efforts by IBM and the Masters to reimagine and deliver a
world-class digital experience for millions of fans – from
launching Masters.com in 1996, to the introduction of AI
Highlights, Round in Three Minutes, My Group, Player Insights and
Projections powered with IBM Watson.
The 88th Masters Tournament will be played from
April 11-14 at Augusta National Golf
Club in Augusta, GA. To see IBM
technology in action, visit Masters.com or the Masters app on your
mobile device, available on the Apple App
Store and Google Play Store.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and
consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries
capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business
processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their
industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in
critical infrastructure areas such as financial services,
telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud
platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital
transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's
breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing,
industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and
flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's
long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility,
inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more
information.
IBM Media Contact:
Sarah
Benchaita
IBM Corporate Communications
Sarah.Benchaita@ibm.com
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-watsonx-brings-new-generative-ai-capabilities-to-masters-tournament-digital-platforms-302104970.html
SOURCE IBM