Wimbledon to use AI commentary at 2023 Championships

The use of the technology will not replace human commentary but may spell the end for line judges in future tournaments

A view inside Wimbledon’s Centre Court (Getty Images)

Wimbledon has announced that it will become the latest sporting event to utilise artificial intelligence (AI), with the All England Club to use the technology to help produce commentary for video highlights packages.

Starting at this year’s Championships, app or website users will be able to watch back highlights from the tournament with audio commentary and captions that have been solely produced by AI.

Working with IBM watsonx, the AI commentary will not replace human commentary as of yet, but will instead be used on the app for highlights without commentary and for matches that aren’t available on the show courts.

This is not the first time that Wimbledon has used the technology, with their stats packages and power rankings already produced using AI. Still, it will mark a significant step forward in the use of such technology at the tournament, which has evolved and grown greatly over the past year with the release of language learning modules such as Chat GPT-4 prompting calls for a slowdown in AI’s enhancement for fears that it may be misused in the future.

Alongside the commentary, Wimbledon and IBM watsonx will also introduce a new feature, dubbed IBM AI draw analysis, which will use machine technology to determine how favourable a player’s route to the final might be based on their ranking and draw for the tournament.

This will not be the first time that IBM has rolled out such features, with the company partnering with the Masters – one of golf’s major championships – in April to produce AI commentary for the shot-by-shot highlights packages that were housed on the tournament’s app.

In that case, the AI commentary was not replacing human commentary which was not present on the app and Wimbledon is keen to make clear that AI will not, at present, be used to replace the human voice.

IBM Sports Partnerships Leader, Kevin Farrar said: “I see AI as very much complementing the human element, rather than replacing it.”

However, Farrar did suggest that the software may eventually be used for full commentary on matches. “You can see in the future, you could train it in different styles and it opens up other possibilities in the future, around different languages, different voices. This is a step on that journey,” he said.

Alongside, the use of computer-generated commentary, there is now renewed uncertainty surrounding the future of line judges on the court, with electronic calling systems set to be widely adopted on the men’s ATP tour by 2025.

Wimbledon has confirmed that line judges will remain on the court for the tournament this summer but their future remains unclear with the US and Australian Open – two of tennis’s other grand slams – having already moved away from human judges to adopt the technology in their tournaments.

All England Club’s technology director Bill Jinks said: “Who’s to say what might happen in the future? Obviously, we’ve seen what’s going on with announcements in the ATP for their plans, and things like that will be considered in the future.”