Our sports-crazed Olympics reporter is back with another fascinating Olympics blog post about how AI was used in Paris this summer. This is our final post in this Summer Olympics series, but don’t despair! Two years from now we’ll be ready with more science from the Milano Cortina 2026 winter Olympics in northern Italy.
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By Michele Miller Houck
I did this research before I watched the 2024 Paris Olympics so that I could really notice when I was watching a sport where the judging could be enhanced by the use of artificial intelligence (AI). As I watched soccer, volleyball, gymnastics and tennis (yes we are an Olympics-binging family here in Charlotte), I was fascinated by all of the data that can be gathered, analyzed, and shared real-time about what was going on on the courts, fields, and tracks at the Olympic Games. Here is the story on where AI was used in Paris.
Intel is leading a group of IT companies that have been assisting the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) in its adoption of AI in several areas at the Olympic Games. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on how AI promotes fairness — helping judges or referees make calls about subjectively judged events like gymnastics, volleyball, and diving. How does AI make a judge’s life easier (or harder)?
Technological help for officials is not new. Americans may not be that familiar with cricket’s decision review system or Australian Rugby Leagues’s bunker, but fans of Coco Gauff and Greenville (NC)’s Tommy Paul (Bronze Medalist in Men’s Doubles along with Taylor Fritz) have witnessed the impact of electronic line calling in tennis. The FIFA World Cup’s “semi-automated” offside technology also uses AI.
AI-powered semi-automated offside technology (SOT) was successfully used at the 2024 Eurocup and Copa Americana. In Paris, referees have also used SOT as well as video assistant referees (VAR). Multiple tracking cameras are used to determine whether a player is in an offside position, and a measurement device is placed inside the ball to determine precisely when it is kicked, to provide fast and accurate offside decisions
AI judging is also starting to emerge in gymnastics. As much as we used to love a perfect ten, it is hard for the casual observer to understand why one gymnast gets a higher score than another.
Gymnastics officials are working to make judging more transparent. In the 2023 world championships, a judging support system was used across all apparatus to match gymnast movements to the rulebook and to make it easier for occasional gymnastics enthusiasts to understand the complicated scoring system. It won’t help Jordan Chiles get her medal back, but it does keep a largely subjective judging system a little more fair.
In addition to advances in timekeeping, official timekeeper Omega has added AI capabilities with its new camera systems to assist judging. With its enhanced data comprehension and analysis capabilities, AI improves judging accuracy by providing information officials can’t see with the naked eye in real time. For example, in diving, AI tracks metrics such as rotations or jump height with cameras, providing more complete information a judge can see even with instant replay.
Another use of AI in the diving competition employed a suite of cameras combined with AI and mathematical calculations to generate a 3D version of the diver in the air. Metrics such as airtime and speed into the water were sent to judges to help review the quality of a performance.
Fairness and accuracy are enhanced using AI to deliver information to officials that can lead to more impartial, transparent scoring and rulings.
In volleyball, high-definition cameras installed around the court captured data on athletes, eliminating the need for players to wear sensors. These cameras detect if a ball is out of bounds and track player movements, generating detailed information on speeds, techniques and jump heights. This data supports judges’ decisions and brings out the statistics nerd in all of us by providing television viewers with detailed information about individual athlete’s performances.
Computer vision technology was also used in tennis events, to track the players, rackets, and the ball in real-time, and in the pole vault to precisely measure the gap between the athlete and the bar. In future years, perhaps we’ll see even more AI introduced into judging and refereeing, but for now, I’m just trying to keep up with all of the technologies and acronyms involved in watching and judging an Olympic event in Paris!