This week, in the run-up to the 88th Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, golf fans, known technically as “patrons,” will be enjoying a view of azaleas and dogwoods at Amen Corner, the 11th hole. You can indulge in cheese sandwiches (and peach ice cream sandwiches). , 12 and 13. But they do not have mobile his device at hand. Electronic devices are strictly prohibited.
The millions of golf fans who watch the tournament on TV (12 million last year) will benefit from increasingly sophisticated tournament tracking options that go beyond just watching the Masters on TV. There it is. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Here's how to watch the Masters.)
And now, of course, it includes AI, or more precisely, generative AI.
Although AI has been part of the Masters experience for several years, gen AI first appeared in 2023 through English voice-over capabilities for app and site content. Of course, this was also the year that Gen AI became mainstream, following the launch of ChatGPT, Gemini (originally known as Bard), Claude, and Copilot. Generation AI allows consumers to experiment with technology to write poems, generate fantastical images, compose symphonies, and even get tips on how to improve their golf swings. is increasingly permeating our lives.
So it's likely that the 2024 Masters will leverage this technology to provide course insights through apps, improve highlight reels, and enable some of the first experiences on Apple Vision Pro devices. Not surprising.
Technology changes, but the goal remains the same. It's all about improving the mobile and site experience for fans who can't make it to Augusta.
The Masters is a legendary four-day golf tournament held during the first week of April at Augusta National Golf Club. After the first two rounds on Thursday and Friday, the top 50 players will advance to the final round. It culminates on Sunday, when the winner will be awarded the tournament's iconic green jacket (and nearly $3 million).
After a delayed start Thursday due to rain, American golfer Bryson DeChambeau finished the first round with fellow American Scottie Scheffler, currently the world's top-ranked golfer, right behind him. Tiger Woods, seeking his sixth Masters victory to tie Jack Nicklaus for the most wins in his career, entered Friday's second round in a tie for 37th place.
(By the way, if you want to learn more about AI, check out CNET's new AI Atlas guide, which includes reviews of Gen AI tools, along with AI news, tips, and commentary.)
A treasure trove of golf data from Hole Insights
Here's how the Gen AI feature works: Let's say Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy is hoping to finally take home the winner's green jacket on Sunday. If I select him as one of my favorite players, the Masters app will tell me his tee time each day. I'll also compile a highlight video and send you alerts with updates on McIlroy if I choose.
The new Hole Insights feature also helps you stay on top of his play.
According to IBM, the feature processes data about every shot hit on the course by every competitor over all four rounds over the past eight years (a total of 170,000 shots, to be exact), and then It calculates the overall probability of what will happen. It has to do with the resting position of the ball for the next shot,” said Noah Shiken, vice president of sports and entertainment at IBM.
As soon as the ball comes to rest, IBM captures the x, y, and z coordinates and compares them to historical data.
So, by activating the 'Track Player' feature within the app, you can select the holes you want to watch from Thursday's Round 1 (like the 12th hole where McIlroy birdied) and a video clip of each shot (a yellow video highlighting the flight of the ball). (Along with the arc) can be viewed. path) and click the circle-within-a-circle icon to get hole insights.
After McIlroy hit his 148-yard first shot on Hole 12, Hole Insights states that historically the probability of a player getting par from that spot is 43.48%.
Golf fans can play the app to see a breakdown of current and past play, as well as predictions for the 2024 tournament. This includes a summary of each hole's play each day and play throughout the tournament. Predict how each hole will play based on performance data. and historical data on the play of each hole for at least the past eight years.
This will be the first Masters Tournament where off-site fans will have access to this data and shot probabilities. And, Syken says, you'll also get more accurate information about the course itself.
So a caddy might estimate, for example, that a golfer will hit the 12th green 70-80% of the time, but Hole Insights shows that it's actually 51%.
“That data has never been available before in this course,” he added.
This is an extension of the existing Track Shot functionality. “In the past, [Track Shots] If you can show that Player A hits his tee shot 227 yards and has 150 yards left to the hole, that's all the information you need,” Syken said.
Hole Insights lets you know that he hit the ball 217 yards to the fairway and the probability of getting par or birdie from that position.
“Until now, we were actually recording the distance the ball traveled, but that had no correlation to actual performance,” Siken added.
Narrate the Masters in AI-inspired Spanish
In addition to the AI-enabled English voice-over feature that debuted in 2023, the Masters app plans to offer AI-enabled Spanish voice-over in 2024 to help tournaments reach a greater global audience.
Last year, IBM and the Masters used a foundational model to train an English AI in “golf's unique language at the Masters” to automate the addition of audio commentary to video clips of players and tournament highlights. IBM says gen AI can help generate diverse sentence structures and vocabularies, and prevent redundant explanations.
Spanish narration is now possible this year thanks to an extensive language model trained in Spanish, so audio and subtitles should sound more realistic for Spanish-speaking fans.
IBM says AI narration provides on-demand audio and subtitle commentary for video highlights of each shot, approximately 20,000 times each year throughout the four-day tournament.
View the master via Apple Vision Pro
Also new this year is the master app for Apple Vision Pro devices, which debuted in February.
In addition to existing app features such as live streams, track shots, and My Groups, where fans can watch all the shots of their favorite golfers, the Vision Pro app includes 3D renderings of courses, allowing fans to view multiple courses. can be seen from the perspective of
Assemble your Masters highlight reel
IBM is one of the few companies to have sponsored the tournament for at least 25 years. This includes the usual technical themes leading to the launch of Masters.com in 1996 and his subsequent AI of 2023 and Generation AI.
In 2024, the My Group feature returns, which uses an AI model to identify your favorite player highlights and automatically adds them to your personalized feed.
IBM accomplishes this by analyzing on-course excitement.
This includes considering factors such as the difficulty of a particular shot, crowd noise, and player gesture recognition (for example, raising a fist in victory) to calculate an excitement score for each shot. Masu.
So IBM will generate personalized highlight reels based on the excitement scores of the players that McIlroy and I have selected as favorites, along with human curation.
The goal is to provide a better, more personalized experience for the approximately 12 million golf fans who don't come to Augusta.
“The Masters wants to give our patrons and fans the best event in the world of sports, so we want to make sure that their on-site experience, just like free parking, is the best it can be.” That's what you're aiming for, right?'' Shiken said. “I'm not going to go to many sporting events that offer free parking.”