Why can't the Olympic Games' AI transformation do without Alibaba Cloud?
How was the "smartest" Olympic Games in history created?
If the spectators of the first Olympic Games in 1896 were to travel through time to the ongoing Milan Winter Olympics, what would shock them the most? The futuristic stadiums, the faster and stronger athletes, or the sophisticated cameras in the stadiums? What might be even more shocking is the artificial intelligence that they can't see but has been involved in every aspect of the Olympics.
The century - old Olympic Games have entered the intelligent era. From the mechanical stopwatch at the 1896 Athens Olympics to the full - coverage cloud - based broadcast at the 2024 Paris Olympics, and then to the creation of the first official large - scale model in the history of the Olympic Games at the Milan Winter Olympics, the century - long journey of the Olympic Movement has always resonated with technological development. As Ilario, the Chief Information Technology Officer of the International Olympic Committee, said in the CCTV program "Dialogue": "Technology has become so inseparable from everything we do at the Olympics. The Olympics has actually become one of the most complex large - scale events globally. This is also an opportunity to lead the Olympic Movement to seize the opportunities in the AI era."
The iteration of Olympic technology has never been achieved overnight. It is the result of long - term in - depth exploration. The intelligent transformation of a global sports event requires a partner with both technological foundation and implementation capabilities. Alibaba Cloud is precisely the indispensable Chinese force in this transformation.
Alibaba Cloud has had a connection with the Olympics for several years. As early as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the core systems were fully migrated to the cloud, and the cloud - based broadcast supported by Alibaba Cloud also completed the technical tests. Yiannis Exarchos, the CEO of the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), said: "During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the distribution and processing volume of cloud - based broadcasts have fully exceeded that of satellite broadcasts. The Milan Winter Olympics will surely deepen this trend."
The explosive growth of event content is the most intuitive manifestation of the Olympic digital transformation. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the total amount of globally produced content was about 60,000 hours. By the 2024 Paris Olympics, this number had reached nearly 500,000 hours. In sharp contrast, the area of the broadcast center, the equipment required for broadcasting, and the carbon emissions have all been significantly reduced. The area of the International Broadcast Center at the 2016 Rio Olympics was 55,000 square meters, while the area of the broadcast center at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will be halved, and the energy consumption will be reduced by 75%. The efficiency improvement that was difficult to achieve with traditional technologies has become a reality with the empowerment of cloud technology.
Yiannis Exarchos frankly said: "The key to the great success of the cloud platform of Alibaba Cloud and the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) lies in the time and intelligence invested by the Alibaba engineering team to customize solutions for the broadcasting industry."
After the full digitalization and cloud - based transformation of content, the next question the Olympics needs to answer is how to make the event content easy to understand and full of fun, and present a universal replay interpretation to the audience. After all, most Olympic audiences are not sports fans. Making niche sports understandable to the public and making exciting sports moments more appealing has become the core direction of Olympic AI applications.
If you've watched the ongoing Milan Winter Olympics, you must have an impression of such a scene: A certain posture of an athlete is suddenly frozen in the air, and you can circle around it and observe it carefully from any angle. This is the remarkable 360 - degree real - time replay technology at the Paris Olympics. From Paris to Milan, this technology has had an important upgrade, which is "spatiotemporal sliced motion trajectory". He Yaming, the person in charge of the video cloud of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, explained: "It's not simply a static frame, but a residual image of all actions from take - off, hovering, rotation, to landing. Through these dynamic displays, the audience can know that the athlete has rotated half a circle more, thus enabling the transformation from just watching the excitement to understanding the nuances."
This technological breakthrough has enabled the Olympic replay to achieve a leap from "slow - motion" to "analysis". Yiannis Exarchos commented: "I think this is a typical example that demonstrates the influence of artificial intelligence. The Alibaba team has achieved a breakthrough: they can provide us with top - quality replays within seconds, precisely presenting the effects we expect." You know, previously, similar replay technologies in the industry often took 25 to 30 minutes to generate a poorly - quality picture, while the Alibaba team has compressed this process to seconds and achieved broadcast - level picture quality requirements.
The iteration of this technology from Paris to Milan is not only an upgrade of visual effects but also a deep implementation of AI technology in the sports scenario. Supported by both AI algorithms and cloud computing power, the beauty of sports is presented to audiences around the world in a more intuitive way.
In addition, another point worthy of attention is the first official large - scale model in the history of the Olympic Games.
Ilario introduced: "We have taken the lead in developing exclusive Olympic AI assistants for national Olympic committees based on Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen large - scale model. The participating delegations coming to Milan can use the chatbot deployed on Alibaba Cloud to ask questions in their native languages and get instant answers." This is not only a concentrated display of Alibaba Cloud's AI technology but also a milestone in the deep integration of the Olympics and AI, enabling AI to expand from event broadcasting to all scenarios of event organization and operation, truly achieving intelligent penetration.
Recently, International Olympic Committee President Dame Karen Price announced that the Milan Winter Olympics will be the "smartest" Olympic Games in history. Behind this, a stable, powerful, and intelligent cloud foundation is crucial. From broadcasting technology to event service, from content production to operation management, as the official cloud service partner of the Olympics, Alibaba Cloud provides a complete set of solutions from infrastructure to top - level AI applications.
Yiannis Exarchos said: "The uniqueness of the cooperation between the Olympic world and Alibaba lies in the high degree of alignment at the value level." Ilario highly praised the Alibaba team: "Since joining the cooperation between the International Olympic Committee and Alibaba in 2020, I have never seen a team that combines professionalism and profound technological foundation so well. We don't regard it as an external enterprise but as part of our own technology team, which is crucial to us."
The long - term cooperation is based on the same frequency of values. The cooperation between Alibaba Cloud and the Olympic Movement has long gone beyond the roles of a simple sponsor and a technology provider, becoming a jointly - driven innovation led by a common vision.
Li Feifei, the senior vice - president and president of international business of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, pointed out the ultimate meaning of Olympic technological innovation: "I believe that the technologies and innovations we have accumulated in the cooperation with the Olympics can create greater value in broader application scenarios and commercial scenarios. What is the significance of our cooperation with the Olympics? 'Flying into ordinary people's homes', I think this is the greatest meaning of technological innovation."
The intelligent transformation of the Olympics is not only a technological revolution but also an upgrade of the global sports industry. With Chinese AI cloud technology at its core, Alibaba Cloud has become a partner and co - builder of Olympic intelligence. It not only showcases the hard power of Chinese technology to the world but also provides a replicable and implementable Chinese solution for the intelligent development of global sports events and large - scale real - time activities in more industries.