Wimbledon’s ‘appalling’ AI commentary is ‘killing humanity’ says tennis presenter Annabel Croft
TENNIS presenter Annabel Croft took a swipe at Wimbledon’s new Artificial Intelligence commentary yesterday — branding it “appalling”.
The tournament is using AI for the first time to voice highlights from outside courts where no commentator is present.
Former Brit tennis pro Annabel, 57 — who is covering the event for BBC TV — called the new tech “an insult to my profession” and warned it will “kill humanity”.
She was played a clip of the Wimbledon AI commentary on Radio 4’s Today and said: “It’s a race against the robot for your job.
“Listening to that, it was very stiff, it was emotionless, no feelings at all.
"Whoever is taking the decision to put a robot on to commentary, and of course into the wider context of all jobs in life, this is going to kill humanity.
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“I mean, what is going on?”
The highlights videos are available on the Wimbledon app and website and are separate to the BBC’s coverage.
They are automatically generated with a program that listens for crowd noise and other factors to spot a game’s most exciting moments.
Tech company IBM’s AI then interpret shots and scores — and generates possible descriptive sentences.
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The computer program then picks the sentence AI ranks as most likely to occur in conventional commentary, and includes it.
The tech has previously been used to commentate on other sports, including golf.
Annabel — who is interviewing players at this year’s tournament — said the AI clips also lack expertise.
She added: “A robot has no feelings but that’s probably going to be built in next.
“This is appalling.
“I feel like we all need to throw our phones in the river and stop our brains being overtaken by AI.”
Kevin Farrar, IBM’s head of sports partnerships, insisted it was “absolutely not intended to replace the human commentator”.