Early this week, IT giant Infosys rolled out new technologies as part of its three-year partnership French Tennis Federation to transform the French Open 2021 experience. The strategic partnership is focused on leveraging Infosys’ expertise in artificial intelligence, big data and analytics, virtual and augmented reality.

With the pandemic lurking around and social distancing still in place, the French Open management allows only a limited number of fans inside the galleries. Infosys has unveiled artificial intelligence, 3D and digital platforms to offer an immersive experience to bridge the gap between remote fans and players.

Sports analytics

At the beginning of the Infosys and French Tennis Federation partnership, the former developed a digital platform for players and coaches to analyse matches throughout the tournament. This time, Infosys AI Videos has further enhanced the Roland-Garros Players application experience with new cognitive capabilities. 

Infosys has introduced natural language search capabilities to help players analyse their performance. Players can do this by asking questions to the AI tool in English, and the tool, in turn, will return insights to inform their training and match strategies. The application is powered by AI-led video analytics and data science. 

The Roland-Garros official Players Portal generates instant summaries of every player’s performance seconds after a match. According to Infosys, the tool enables the remote collaboration of coaches and players worldwide.

Virtual fan experience

To allow fans to feel the pulse of live matches, Infosys’ data and insights capabilities have been integrated with the actual sights and sounds from matches in the tournament. This function is available in the Infosys Match Centre on Roland-Garros official website and application. 

Infosys has deployed AI-powered voice assistants to make commentary and insights available through smart home devices to provide an immersive experience to fans. 

The Infosys Match Centre has been made available in 3D format, providing fans courtside views. Furthermore, the Match Centre in the app will offer a mobile-first data visualisation experience to fans. 

AI-assisted journalism 

Infosys’ AI-assisted Journalism features tools for digital-first media consumption. It includes match analysis, natural language generation (NLG)-based match synopsis, and integrations to allow easy embedding in media reports. This year, AI-assisted Journalism has been updated to generate insights and graphics for richer storytelling. 

The AI-assisted Journalism function pulls elements from large data sets and develops intelligent narratives for official broadcasters of the Roland-Garros tournament, and allows them to integrate these elements into their articles. 

The AI solution will provide post-match player interaction and autographs on camera. Additionally, it will enable resizing videos using AI to produce ready-to-publish clips for social platforms that require specific aspect ratios, besides providing automatically generated graphics– stats, trends, and charts. 

Furthermore, Infosys’ AI Highlights creates highlights automatically for every match within minutes of the completion of a game. It leverages cloud-based AI/ML services on audio, video (to include player emotion, crowd noise and match-context) and statistical data of a match to create and deliver highlights across digital platforms. 

3D Art Museum

Roland-Garros stadium has a museum for fans on French tennis history. However, with fans unable to physically visit the stadium and the museum, Infosys announced the launch of a first of its kind 3D art museum, celebrating the heritage of Roland-Garros. The 3D virtual art museum will provide an immersive experience where audiences will interact with the artwork and posters preserved for the last 41-years. Furthermore, to enhance the experience, it will provide commentary on each piece of art. 

Take a tour here. 

Wrapping up

The use of AI in sports has become popular in the last couple of years. A Grand View Research report suggests that the global sports analytics industry stood at $885 million last year and was expected to grow at a CAGR of 21.3 percent between 2021 and 2028.

By being the official digital innovation partner for Roland-Garros, Infosys is putting India on the sports analytics map.

The post How Infosys Transformed Roland Garros 2021 Experience Using AI appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.