Amazon will incorporate artificial intelligence into its weekly Thursday Night Football games, according to Sportico. During a stream, viewers will see a second on-screen line alongside the regular yellow first-down marker. The new line will indicate when a team should punt or go for it on fourth down, as determined by AI. The new features, which will live Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats, roll out on September 14 as the 2023 season kicks off, TechCrunch reported.
“We’re going to mirror what teams are doing,” Prime Video TNF analytics expert Sam Schwartzstein told Sportico. “Now there’s a secondary goal on third down.”
The AI, which was developed using players’ position and acceleration captured by special sensors, has been trained on 35,000 plays with the ability to evolve as defensive coordinators change.
The unique way in which AI will be incorporated into the broadcast underscores how varied the technology can be used to influence our lives and programming. With interest in AI blowing up earlier this year, companies are rushing to find novel applications and to tout their capabilities.
Using AI to make a fourth down suggestion is just the beginning. Amazon’s tapping machine learning to choose key plays to build recap packages. Perhaps the most ambitious idea came from Schwartzstein – the creation of a neural network with the ability to analyze defensive formation footage in real time and identify who was most likely to go after the quarterback during a blitz.