The Olympic Games in Paris, held from July 26, 2024 to August 11, 2024, saw the gathering of more than 10,000 athletes from about 200 countries. However, the most prominent feature of this edition was that it was the “first AI Olympics,” where Olympic technology partners engaged in showcasing new AI initiatives, from chatbots for athletes to performance recommendations generated by machine learning. These initiatives primarily aimed to develop the Olympic Games system and assist in the successful organization of the event.
Extensive Utilization
In a pioneering initiative, the International Olympic Committee launched the Olympic AI Agenda in April 2024, which outlines a series of principles for the role the committee envisions for technology and the expected impact AI can have on sports. The Paris Olympic Games serve as the prototype for implementation. This is the third strategic document launched under the leadership of IOC President Thomas Bach, following the Olympic Agenda 2020 launched in December 2014 and Olympic Agenda 2020+5 launched in March 2021.
The current document outlines the expected impact AI can have on sports and how the IOC, as the leader of the Olympic Movement, intends to lead the global implementation of AI in sports. This report defined the IOC’s ambition and guiding principles, identified high-impact areas for AI application, explored the framework and governance mechanisms needed to mitigate risks, and promote responsible use of AI. It also outlined four commitments made by the IOC as it takes the first steps in integrating AI into the Olympic ecosystem, leveraging the power of AI in its operations, in the Olympic Games, and across the Olympic Movement.
Building on the above, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games demonstrated various areas of AI utilization, which can be addressed as follows:
Enhancing cybersecurity for athletes:
The IOC announced earlier this year (2024) an AI-powered monitoring system designed to protect athletes from online abuse (Threat Matrix). The system scans posts in 35 different languages during the Olympics, creating a digitally safe environment during the Olympic Games, as popular athletes in particular face significant backlash if their performance does not meet expectations.
Accordingly, AI monitors hundreds of thousands of social media accounts of athletes and officials, reporting abusive messages for intervention by relevant platforms and immediate removal before athletes can see them. The committee estimated that the Paris Games would generate more than half a billion social media posts.
Supporting effective communication mechanisms through an athlete-specific chatbot: AthleteGPT, an AI chatbot designed for athletes, was introduced and can be accessed through the Athlete365 mobile app. The chatbot, a large language model (LLM), was developed by Paris-based Mistral AI and Intel’s Gaudi processors, one of the prominent AI footprints at this year’s Olympics. For accredited athletes in the Games, the service is designed to provide easy and quick answers to common questions on topics such as social media guidelines and anti-doping rules.
Improving athlete performance and training:
AI has tremendous potential to help teams and athletes gain precise insights into their performance and adjust their training accordingly. By registering athletes on available smartphone apps, Intel’s AI-powered 3D athlete tracking technology can track 21 points across the human body to assess precise physical movement, providing the biomechanical insights coaches seek in athletes.
The Olympics also saw a boom in the use of wearable technology, with AI-equipped wearable devices monitoring various physiological parameters such as heart rate, oxygen levels, and biomechanics. This data helps coaches and athletes design collective and individual training programs, identify optimal nutrition schedules, improve performance, prevent injuries, and even design custom shoes and sportswear. Many professional and amateur sports also use AI, especially machine learning, to help sort and categorize footage and suggest areas for performance improvement.
Revolutionizing talent discovery:
The ease of collecting individual data, along with AI analysis, can also help coaches discover new talents. Tech giants like Intel and Samsung Electronics have deployed an AI-powered talent identification system that participants can test at the Stade de France. Using smartphones, tablets, and Intel’s cloud-based computer vision and AI technology, participants can perform various athletic exercises and then receive Intel’s suggestions on which Olympic sport they should pursue.
In March 2024, the IOC launched an exploratory program that used 3DAT to identify more than 40 children in Senegal who showed promising skills to become Olympic athletes for the 2026 Youth Olympic Games, by analyzing simple exercises such as running and jumping. This makes sports fairer, ensures equal opportunities for as many different countries as possible, and points to a more diverse and inclusive future in the sports field.
Precision in real-time refereeing decisions:
Data analysis and AI are being used to provide deeper insights into various aspects of the games. Using AI makes it easier to make refereeing decisions accurately, and this is applied in football through the use of information recorded by a set of cameras around the field and chips implanted in the ball. While these technologies have not spread widely in other sports, where it is difficult to remove ambiguity, especially in sports that require physical contact, the Paris Olympics saw a breakthrough in this field. Collaboration with global Olympic partner Alibaba has led to providing a record number of high-quality AI-powered multi-camera replay systems to create 3D models and map additional viewpoints across a number of sports. Olympic-related content can also be transferred via the cloud to effectively reduce the carbon footprint.
Improving viewer experience and enhancing engagement with the Olympic Games:
The massive data collected during the games feeds not only AI algorithms but also media viewers passionate about statistics. These statistics and figures enrich the viewer’s experience and discussions around different games by providing additional comparison metrics such as acceleration, maximum speeds, and stride lengths. These developments contribute to raising the level of viewing experience and developing a stronger bond between fans and the athletes they support.
AR-equipped stadiums provide interactive digital displays that improve the viewing experience, where spectators can use AR glasses to see real-time data and graphics of the event happening on the field. Sports AR applications also allow fans to synchronously view player statistics and game information using their smartphones, making the experience more interactive.
In this regard, through Intel’s Geti AI platform, personalized footage can be provided to viewers, allowing them to choose exactly what they want to see, and automatically compile and display selected clips through Automatic Highlights Generation technology, which is a breakthrough in sports broadcasting. It may also be more beneficial for coaches and broadcasters from countries with limited access to broadcasting rights.
Supporting enhanced broadcast experiences and engagement services:
Broadcasters use AI to analyze vast amounts of data and provide real-time statistics and predictions to viewers. AI-powered cameras and drones capture high-definition images and videos, providing unique perspectives and enhancing broadcast quality. Additionally, machine learning algorithms are used to analyze social media trends and measure public sentiment, helping organizers better understand and interact with the audience. Collaboration with global Olympic partner Alibaba has provided a record number of high-quality AI-powered multi-camera replay systems to create 3D models and map additional viewpoints across a number of sports. Olympic-related content can also be transferred via the cloud to effectively reduce the carbon footprint.
Assisting in improving energy consumption and effective planning:
While the Games use renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, to reduce their carbon footprint, efficient AI-powered energy management systems are used to monitor and optimize energy consumption across all sites. The concept of digital twinning, or digital representations of places in partnership with Intel, has also been used for optimal planning of places that need energy, where cameras need to be placed, and whether there are any accessibility issues, all without the need to be on-site each time, which paves the way for more efficient planning of future Olympic Games.
Preparing smart infrastructure:
AI-powered smart surveillance systems have been deployed to monitor crowd movements and ensure security. These systems can quickly identify and respond to potential security threats, ensuring a safe environment for athletes and spectators. Moreover, smart traffic management systems optimize transportation routes, reduce congestion, and improve the flow of people and devices during sporting events.
Existing Challenges
Despite the gains from using AI applications in the recent Olympic Games, there are still challenges, which can be addressed as follows:
The dilemma of fairness in countries’ benefit from AI: Despite the advantages AI offers, the cost of owning these applications and continuously updating them will remain exclusive to developed countries, which may lead to widening the gap between rich countries that already dominate the largest number of medals and the rest of the world. This is one of the risks highlighted by the IOC in its AI agenda, although it has made a promise to make the benefit of AI in sports available to all, as the IOC announced the use of AI in talent discovery and the global launch of this project in 2025.
In fact, this gap is clearly shown through the growth forecasts of the AI market in the sports field. The size of the AI market in the sports industry is expected to see significant growth due to the increased use of technology in sports, from $5.93 billion in 2024 to $20.94 billion by 2029, with a compound annual growth rate of over 28.69%, according to data from market research firm Mordor Intelligence. Currently, the largest regions benefiting from AI in sports are North America, while the fastest-growing is the Asia-Pacific region, while Africa remains the least growing in this field.
Decline in technological equality between players: This has become noticeable through the decline of some countries in some sports where they used to achieve great results due to the difference in technology use. We have noticed that the integration of many athletes with technology and data in their training and preparations for sporting events has given them an advantage against African athletes who use little or no technology. The Olympics saw new strategies in track and field, which were supposed to be African strongholds. The results show that intensive preparations for these events by athletes who emerge victorious have given them a competitive advantage over their African counterparts. In the women’s 800-meter final, the British runner won the race ahead of both the Ethiopian and Kenyan, with her speed throughout the race showing that she was well-prepared and knew how to stay ahead of her peers.
The gap in owning data supporting AI: Some sports and countries with large professional leagues are likely to retain a significant advantage over others because they have the resources to collect high-quality data and train algorithms on it. In some Olympic sports, there is not a great abundance of such data, which affects how AI is used in player selection processes. This also extends to how technology is used in other aspects of these games, such as refereeing.
Escalating gap between sports: Some sports will continue to benefit more from AI compared to others, due to funding obstacles and the specific needs of each sport. Although water polo is the oldest Olympic team sport, the money it generates is not as big as in basketball or football, which may weaken the amount of funding allocated for that sport to benefit from AI technologies. Also, the use of AI in water polo would face different challenges, such as training algorithms on underwater captured images.
Misinformation and defamation of the host country: Using the same AI tools, Moscow imposed its presence during the Olympic Games in Paris. Disinformation groups linked to the Russian government were accused of spreading provocative claims and attacking the host country, with AI-generated videos and images denouncing the 2024 Olympics being circulated. Rumors were also spread about a number of players.
Doubting AI capabilities: Some companies objected to the use of AI in the Olympic Games, believing that AI is not the driving force of technology in the Paris Games. For example, Michael Heiman, Vice President of Global Sport at Getty Images, doubted the ability of AI in facial recognition to help identify the athlete in a particular image, believing it might succeed in a professional league with a relatively modest number of players, but is not yet ready to recognize the faces of thousands of less famous athletes.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns broadcasting rights in Europe, announced that it decided not to use AI in Paris, as they believe they have not yet figured out how to leverage AI in live sports broadcasting. Airweave, the Japanese manufacturer of standard plastic mattresses placed on top of cardboard bed frames in the Olympic Village, despite the company conducting a high-tech AI body scan of athletes to help determine the optimal firmness level for each of the three mattress segments, these mattresses still receive mixed reviews from athletes. On the other hand, not everyone sees AI as the magic solution to Olympic challenges.
In conclusion, it can be said that the Paris 2024 Olympics is a realistic documentation of technology’s ability to revolutionize the world of sports. Technology in general and artificial intelligence, in particular, will play an increasingly vital role in shaping the future of the Olympic Games and sports in general, while global sports organizations will bear the burden of addressing the challenges posed by this use.
