How NBC will use an Al Michaels A.I. for 2024 Olympics
Iconic sports broadcaster Al Michaels will be part of the 2024 Paris Olympics coverage ... sort of.
NBC announced on Wednesday it will use artificial intelligence to replicate Michaels' voice, delivering personalized daily Olympic recaps for this year's Games.
Michaels' likeness will be used in the "Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock," which will provide users with a customized playlist with highlights of the events "most relevant to them" from the previous day. The clips will be narrated by a "high-quality" A.I. version of Michaels' voice. NBC said the A.I. was trained using his past experiences on NBC to match his "signature expertise and elocution."
Michaels currently is the play-by-play voice of Amazon Prime Video's "Thursday Night Football," but prior to that was NBC's voice of "Sunday Night Football" from 2006-22. Even though he left the network's NFL coverage, he still has an emeritus role with NBC.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Michaels said he was initially "very skeptical" when NBC approached him about the idea to use A.I. to create a replica of him. But he changed his mind once he heard what the A.I. sounded like.
"Frankly, it was astonishing. It was amazing,” he said. "And it was a little bit frightening.
"It was not only close, it was almost 2% off perfect," Michaels added. "I’m thinking, Whoa."
NBC said there will be nearly seven million possible personalized variants of "Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock" during the Olympics. The feature will be available to Peacock users on the app and will start on July 27, one day after the opening ceremonies of the Summer Games.