Here at Acceleration Economy, we’re committed to delivering the full scope of AI innovation in the burgeoning AI ecosystem. To that end, we get particularly excited when we see AI use cases that stand out in their originality and visibility.
One such use case manifests in a new collaboration between IBM and the team behind golf’s storied Masters Tournament taking place this week. It’s a standout example of the added value GenAI brings to the user experience and the power of co-creation. The new AI-powered features will be available to golf fans via the Masters app and Masters.com. The features include advanced Hole Insights and AI-enabled Spanish language narration, building on the English-language AI Narration feature that launched last year.
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The technology for the features is supported by watsonx and the new capabilities were developed collaboratively by IBM Consulting and the Masters digital team. Ultimately, the aim is to provide a more personalized experience for Masters fans.
IBM Hole Insights combines natural language processing with structured data to provide fans with bespoke stats on the play, current and historical, as well as predictive analysis for upcoming holes through Masters.com and the Masters app.
IBM is also introducing Spanish language narration to provide automated audio and closed caption commentary on-demand for every shot. Now, fans can access this tool in English and Spanish and even combine the two languages to, for example, hear audio in English and read closed captions in Spanish. The feature utilizes GenAI and LLMs built on watsonx to deliver authentic translations that understand the jargon and the eccentricities of each language.
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“The generative AI power of watsonx is enabling IBM and the Augusta National Golf Club to co-create technology solutions that bring the magic of the Masters to life for millions of fans around the world,” said Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President at IBM.
“From training and tuning to monitoring and maintenance, watsonx manages the entire lifecycle of the AI models used to create features such as AI Narration and Hole Insights. These are the same capabilities we’re applying to our work with businesses across industries as they aim to build better customer care experiences, reach new levels of productivity, and make more informed, data-driven business decisions.”
IBM and the Masters team have worked together for over 25 years to develop the digital ambitions of the team behind this famous tournament. This is the latest step in this ongoing collaborative relationship that is built on a solid foundation of trust and data.
The IBM team has helped build a massive repository of data. For example, IBM has been supporting shot tracking for years, helping the Masters team to amass a huge library of shot data to use in predictive models. This structured data is the lifeblood of an experience like Hole Insights.
And then there’s the element of trust. A trusted collaborative partnership leads to more opportunities for innovation. The Masters team could only embark on a project as ambitious as this knowing they had a trusted technology partner to deliver the experience accurately, and perhaps more importantly, safely, with inbuilt data governance and protection.
While this innovation is a consumer-facing example of how IBM can collaborate with customers to bring new ideas to life, some parallels can be made in B2B. IBM Consulting is demonstrating how it works with organizations to develop new customer experiences, decide on an approach, and then delivers that experience through a toolkit sitting on the periphery of what’s possible.
