Paris 2024: The AI-powered Olympics

This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.

It was a moment that went down in history: In 1976, a 14-year-old girl from Romania named Nadia Comăneci became the first gymnast in Olympic history to be awarded a perfect score of 10. 

Nowadays, though, AI complements that judging process. Alain Zobrist is from the watch company Omega, which has been the official timekeeper at the Olympics since 1932. He’s responsible for data-handling technologies across all sports at the games.

“Technology Omega deploys as official timekeeper will capture moments of an athlete’s performance that you would not be able to see with your bare naked eye,” he said.

While the International Olympic Committee says AI should allow more accurate scoring and real time analysis, a human judge’s expertise is still crucial. Ilario Corna is the Committee’s Chief Technology Officer, and said when it comes to athletes using AI, it needs to be used fairly and can level the playing field between countries.

“There is a lot of investment being made in AI, especially for athletes,” he said. “We launched a talent program in Senegal where we went with AI to find talent. We tested in less than a week over 1,000 young athletes. We found 48 talents that were not discovered before.”

For the athletes at the games, Corna said that AI will be used to safeguard them online and they’ll even have what he likes to call “their own Athlete GPT.”

“As you know, we have a lot of rules, a lot of guidelines that athletes need to comply for, and we are creating a GPT — think about, like, ChatGPT — where athletes will be able to ask questions and get an answer,” he said.

AI has broader applications at the Games, too. New AI technologies will enhance the experience for fans in Paris, according to Sarah Vickers, head of Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic program.

“We have this great activation that we’re doing at Stade de France where fans can test out Olympic sports they’re most like,” she said. “Using computer vision and AI algorithms to build exercises that people can do, they then compare against other athletes. And what that’s really demonstrating is that you can use computer vision to identify talent.”

According to the International Olympic Committee, around 3 million unique visitors with Games tickets are expected to visit Paris, and an estimated $2.6 billion will be spent by tourists during the Games. 

AI will also be used to control the crowds, said Vickers. “We’re using AI to help just manage the general operations of understanding people flow and people movement.”

AI-powered surveillance will identify potential security risks such as abandoned packages or crowd surges. The authorities say it won’t use facial recognition, but civil rights groups like Amnesty International are concerned it will still analyze physical characteristics and could unfairly target people of color. 

But the tech will mainly be used for practical purposes, Vickers argued, “to make better operational decisions around beverage, transportation and all of those things.”

Ilario Corna from the International Olympic Committee said he sees Paris as a test-run for AI, but he’s looking ahead to Los Angeles’ Olympic games in 2028, where he expects it to play an even bigger role.