The annual Masters Tournament at Augusta National is bringing tech enhancements to improve the viewing experience for millions of golf fans worldwide. IBM has revealed new artificial intelligence features coming to the Masters app and website, leveraging its watsonx AI platform.
One major addition is “Hole Insights” – detailed data-driven analysis and predictions for each hole on the course generated by natural language processing. Fans will get recaps of how holes played on a given day, projections on which holes may be toughest, and even the historical likelihood of scoring a birdie from wherever the ball lies.
It’s the first time live Tournament insights based on actual shots will be available directly through the digital platforms. The insights pull from a trove of over 170,000 shots worth of data from the last eight years at Augusta.
For the globally-followed event, IBM has also cooked up AI-generated Spanish language narration to complement the English narration it debuted last year. The AI narrates closed captions and audio commentary for highlight reels showing every shot on the course – around 20,000 clips.
Rather than simple translation, IBM engineers used an AI training method called few-shot learning to teach the language model to natively understand and speak Spanish. Fans can toggle between English and Spanish audio and captions as desired when watching clips.
“The generative AI abilities of watsonx allow IBM and Augusta National to co-create tech that brings the magic of the Masters to life worldwide,” said Jonathan Adashek, IBM’s SVP of Marketing and Communications. “These AI models deliver the same transformative capabilities we apply across industries to enhance customer experiences, productivity and data-driven decision making.”
The tech upgrades build on IBM’s 25-year digital partnership with the Masters. Their collaborations range from launching Masters.com in 1996 to implementing innovations like AI Highlights, Round in Three Minutes summaries, player tracking and data-driven forecasting.
Fans can experience the enhanced AI-powered viewing features during the 88th Masters Tournament from 11th-14th April by visiting Masters.com or downloading the Masters app.
