As part of his overhaul of the 30-year-old X Games franchise, Jeremy Bloom deployed AI judging for the first time at the Winter X Games in Aspen in January.
The technology, developed with Google Cloud and anchored in decades of action sports video, helped judges in their scoring. It went so well that X Games CEO Bloom — who is calling the AI judge “The Owl” — this week launched a new AI venture out of Boulder that he hopes will be the platform for fairness and transparency in all judged and refereed sports.
“I think everyone wants more objectivity as it relates to scoring and judging,” said Bloom, the Loveland-reared Olympian turned entrepreneur whose plans for the summer and winter X Games include the first global league and team format. “The way the technology showed up in Aspen was a glimpse into the future of sport.”
The new Owl AI company announced Wednesday is backed by $11 million in seed funding led by tech venture capital firm S32. Josh Gwyther, the former head of AI Solutions Architecture at Google, is the startup’s CEO.
Bloom knows the grumblings of athletes over judging. It can be unpredictable at times, a common refrain from athletes in nearly all sports. Bloom pointed to recent assertions that NFL referees were favoring the Kansas City Chiefs, which mirrored decade-old claims that snowboarding judges seemed especially fond of halfpipe icon Shaun White, who scored the first-ever perfect 100 in the 2012 X Games Superpipe.
“All these athletes feel they have had questionable judging in their career. I think everybody is excited about having technology bring accuracy to the X Games,” said Bloom, a two-time Olympian who competed in moguls, where winners were chosen by a panel of judges, .
The X Games will roll out The Owl AI judging later this month at the Summer X Games in Salt Lake City and Bloom hopes to see the technology used in other judged sports — like gymnastics and figure skating — in the coming months.
The new AI analysis is not going to replace judges, Bloom said. It will complement their work, not unlike the decade-old video technology that accurately delivers height statistics to halfpipe judges.
During the Winter X Games Jan. 23 snowboard superpipe contest, commentators asked The Owl AI to make predictions for the contest after watching the men practice.
Based on its analysis of practice, the AI computer predicted that Australian snowboarder and four-time Olympian Scotty James would take gold, followed by Japan’s Yuto Totsuka and Ayumu Hirano. After an hour of playoff and finals competition, the podium mirrored the computer’s prediction, with the boxing-gloved James taking his fourth consecutive X Games medal with the first triple cork in X Games competition.
It’s not just about judging either. The AI systems can generate their own live commentary in a variety of languages, offering viewers in dozens of countries coverage in their native tongue.
It would be prohibitively expensive to deploy dozens of native-speaking event broadcasters, Bloom said, and the AI narrators will know the athletes’ history “better than the humans.”
“It knows their backgrounds, when they landed on the scene and it uses its own brains to think and commentate,” he said. “This will deepen the fan experience globally.”
The Owl AI — which will be based in the X Games headquarters off Pearl Street in Boulder — has been built with the help of athletes and judges as well as top AI thinkers like Gwyther.
Gwyther said he anticipates different levels of AI commentary as well, with variations based on the viewer’s knowledge of the sport. For example first-time X Games watchers could dial up commentary that explains the athleticism and tricks in more basic terms, while veterans of the show could choose more expert perspectives.
Expert commentary appealing to in-the-know viewers often makes assumptions about basic knowledge, which can be off-putting for first timers venturing into the scene. The lingo and speed of the trickery can be disorienting for new arrivals and the Bloom-led expansion of the X Games brand relies on hooking lots of first-time viewers.
“We are not trying to eliminate human commentary, only augment,” Gwyther said. “Newcomers can have a commentator who is introducing them to the sport and trying to give them a better understanding.”
Tom Wallisch, a legendary pro freeskier whose Olympic commentary provided invaluable insight into ski superpipe and slopestyle events, watched the AI judging of the Winter X Games closely. He wonders if a computer can pick up some of the nuance in the athletic contests.
“It’s hard in our sports to quantify the style and finesse elements of some riding,” he said. “I don’t know if AI could ever judge it perfectly. It would be like AI judging different art.”
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