- By Melissa Landon
- December 05, 2024
- Feature
Summary
Industrial plants may soon be using AI and other technology associated with the world’s biggest sports and broadcasting event.
As plant managers and chief information officers evaluate the latest technology for enabling everything from digital transformation to autonomous plants, advice and inspiration come from many sources. A surprising source was the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. The technology partners for this summer’s sports and broadcasting mega-event showcased artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, 8K image distribution and other technologies that may soon be supporting industrial operations and communications.
With a viewership of more than 34,000,000 around the world, the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics was ubiquitous on television, streaming services, social media and in household conversations. Though the athletes, like 13-time Olympic medallist Katie Ledecky and pole vaulting world recorder holder Armand Duplantis, are the real stars of the Paris 2024 Olympics, technologies like AI, cloud computing and 8K became major topics of discussion during the XXXIII Olympiad. Some technological advancements made their debut in Paris, while others are slated to take the spotlight beginning at Milano Cortina 2026.
“During the last decade, it has become obvious that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been engaging with more and more technology companies as top partners,” said Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS). “Working with them has been a huge opportunity for OBS.” Key technology partners this year included Deloitte, Intel, Alibaba Cloud and others.
Move over, satellite: OBS Cloud 3.0 makes its Olympic debut
OBS, the host broadcaster of the Olympic Games, captured and produced more than 11,000 hours (450 days!) of content during Paris 2024, 15% more than Tokyo 2020. For more than 50 years, OBS has relied on satellite to distribute the footage of the Olympic Games to Media Rights Holders, the hundreds of broadcast and streaming organizations given the right to show the Games live, delayed or in highlights.
On July 25, 2024, OBS and Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, announced the launch of OBS Cloud 3.0, an AI-powered cloud technology. OBS Cloud 3.0 dethroned satellite as the main method of remote footage distribution for the Olympic Games, beginning with Paris 2024. Transmitting content through the cloud offered several benefits, including reliability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness.
“We have the responsibility to support, as much as possible, all broadcasters to be able to have access to Olympic content we are creating so they can deliver this content to their audience in the most efficient way,” said OBS Chief Technology Officer Sotiris Salamouris. “The live cloud is a very innovative way of doing this, using essentially the public internet and available public cloud infrastructure all over the world.”
Exarchos emphasized that Alibaba’s OBS 3.0 allows OBS to enable much better collaboration among teams. The technology also promotes sustainability, he said, because broadcasters don’t have to bring as much equipment into the host city. “The custom-made broadcast media cloud platform allows broadcasters to perform many tasks that normally would require a huge hardware infrastructure,” he said.
AI enables world’s first 8K OTT broadcast
Explained Exarchos, “8K provides an unprecedented level of resolution in the images. To achieve that, of course, you need computational capacity that is very high. Intel's technology sits behind the 8K production and streaming that OBS did in Paris.”
For Paris 2024, OBS broadcast servers were outfitted with Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel Deep Learning Boost technology so they could encode and compress the video signals and deliver the footage to the world in moments. This enabled the 8K high-resolution TV viewing experience with 7,680 horizontal and 4,320 vertical pixels, boasting 33 million pixels in total.
“This summer, Intel [accelerated] its mission of bringing AI Everywhere using Intel solutions at Paris 2024, showcasing the powerful potential of technology and AI to create immersive and interactive experiences at the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 for millions around the world,” said Sarah Vickers, leader of Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic Games Office, in a press release. Intel embeds intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and computing devices to unleash the potential of data.
AI helps edit video, optimize workflow
Salamouris said artificial intelligence helped OBS optimize workflow and automate the creation of one of the most necessary types of video content: highlights. A highlight provides a video summary of any given Olympic competition. It may be 3, 5 or 10 minutes long and showcase the high points of what happened during the game, session or competition.
Highlights are in high demand, and broadcasters request highlights with various customizations. For example, a highlight might focus on what a particular country is doing during a competition, a specific athlete or something else. If you consider how many sports and sessions there are, the number of highlights multiples significantly.
“This is where AI can help because now it is possible to use AI to create customized highlight packages according to special requests from the user,” said Salamouris.
Deloitte becomes games technology integration partner
To pull all these technology platforms together going forward, the IOC announced an expanded partnership with Deloitte this past spring. The agreement established a new integrated technology infrastructure and Games platform to secure the Olympic and Paralympic Games’ technology operations beginning at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games and continuing through the Olympic Games Brisbane 2032.
John Skowron, Deloitte vice chairman of Olympic and Paralympic Games, stated: “This is an exciting moment for Deloitte as we build on the incredible work we have already begun with the IOC around digital transformation, knowledge management infrastructure, as well as programs supporting athletes and sustainability initiatives.”
Deloitte is also helping the IOC develop the Olympic AI Agenda, which will provide direction regarding how AI can be implemented to revolutionize the Olympic experience through the transformation and modernization of scalable technology solutions.
“The Olympic Games have always been a beacon of innovation and excellence, striving to set new standards in every aspect of sport,” said Ilario Corna, the IOC’s chief information and technology officer. “Our commitment to being at the forefront of technological advancement is unwavering, and with Deloitte as our Games technology integration partner, we are poised to reach new heights.”
About The Author
Melissa Landon is the senior content editor at Automation.com, a subsidiary of the International Society of Automation (ISA). She has a master's degree in communication from the University of Kentucky and more than 10 years of writing and editing experience. She spent the summer in Paris, France enjoying some inredible sporting events during the 2024 Summer Olympics while exploring the technological advancements involved with broadcasting the Olympic Games.
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