The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris are fast approaching and one of the ways to stream every sporting event – primetime or not – will be in the United States. NBC’s Peacock. To bring a more personalized experience to all subscribers, Peacock is pairing famed broadcaster Al Michaels with the power of AI (as in aartificial Iintelligence).
Each day of the Games, you’ll receive a personalized highlight reel as part of a new feature called “Your Daily Peacock Olympic Recap,” featuring moments from three sports of your choosing. Some of it will be narrated and highlighted by Michaels—well, the generative AI version of him.
And fear not – NBC got permission to use his voice from Michaels, who said “I was skeptical but clearly curious” when approached, but “saw a demonstration with details of what they had in mind” and went along with it. That’s a better approach than ChatGPT did it with Her.
Once you’ve gone through an onboarding process, Peacock’s backend technology essentially works to create a text script using the subtitles and metadata from the sports clips. This is then put into Michaels’ style and proofread.
The script then goes through a voice AI, which has a basic model built from Michael’s previous appearances on NBC—interestingly, he didn’t record anything special for this one—and a multi-step process that enhances the speech to get the right delivery, including pronunciations, annotations, and even breathing style or overall speed.
Finally, and this is an important step, there is a real human checking that it sounds natural and that there are no glaring inaccuracies. The videos have a disclaimer of sorts, with “Generated with AI” displayed in the top left corner each day.
The result is that you’ll receive a push notification in the Peacock app on iOS or Android, letting you know that the recap is ready and you’ll be thrown into it. It starts with an introduction of about 30 seconds, followed by clips from the sport, then another story from Al, more clips, another combined with clips, and then a sign-off highlighting the main events of the day. You can also jump around to get back to the narrated part or skip through the different fragments.
This sounds real
When you first sign up, which is free for all Peacock subscribers, you write your name, choose your three favorite sports and then the types of highlights you find most interesting. It’s pretty simple and I can confirm from a demo that it sounded like Michaels. The clips sounded natural, with words you’d expect to hear, and they generally had a good rhythm.
The first daily recap will be the same for all users on July 27, 2024, as it will show moments from the Opening Ceremony, but if you sign in, from July 28, 2024, you will see custom recaps designed based on your specific requests. .
Peacock said the various team members, including engineers and data scientists, integrate, optimize and validate LLM (large language model) technology and speech synthesis, essentially taking Michaels’ voice and creating a model. It will be very interesting to see how it performs on a daily basis and the reactions from all kinds of users.
It seems like a unique way to provide easy access to your favorite moments from the games, whether you’re a big fan of the most popular sport shown in prime time or a sport that’s usually harder to find. Possibly, more importantly, it’s a way to get more people excited about the games.
As the 2024 Paris Olympics get closer, you’ll see the option to sign up for “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock.” The experience will be available via the iOS or Android app and on the web.