FLUSHING, N.Y., Aug.
30, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it is
launching IBM Watson Media, a new suite of AI-powered solutions on
the IBM Cloud that analyze images, video, language, sentiment and
tone, at the US Open. By combining IBM Watson with IBM's video
capabilities, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) will be
able to rapidly share highlight videos of more matches while
engaging and informing fans more than ever before.
The US Open will use one of the first solutions available
through IBM Watson Media called Cognitive Highlights. Developed at
IBM Research with IBM iX, Cognitive Highlights can identify the
match's most important moments by analyzing the statistical tennis
data, sounds from the crowd and the reactions of a player using
both action and facial expression recognition. The system then
ranks the shots from seven US Open courts and auto-curates the
highlights, which simplifies the video production process and
ultimately positions the USTA team to scale and accelerate the
creation of cognitive highlight packages.
The finished highlight videos will be available in four
ways:
- Each day, the USTA will post a Highlight of the Day, as ranked
by Watson, on its Facebook
page.
- Fans that "favorite" players on the US Open apps will receive
real-time push notification alerts about those players' highlights.
Fans on iOS 10 can play the highlights within the lock screen.
- On the player bio page, video highlights will be available
across all of the USTA's digital platforms.
- Onsite in the player's lounge and in the fan-facing IBM Watson
Experience on the plaza near Court 9.
"The US Open is packed with so much action across so many courts
that even the fastest video team is challenged to keep pace with
what's happening," said Noah Syken,
IBM VP of Sports & Entertainment Partnerships. "To meet that
challenge, Watson is now watching
the matches alongside the USTA to help bring fans closer to the
best moments across the courts shortly after they happen. We're
seeing this technology come to life through tennis, but the entire
IBM Watson Media portfolio has the potential to impact many
industries."
Leading up to the US Open, IBM's cognitive highlights technology
was tested as a proof of concept at this year's Masters Tournament,
and also was served as part of the content production system at
Wimbledon. The successful results and positive reception at both
events led to the technology being integrated into the new soon to
be commercially available solutions from IBM Watson Media.
Beyond the US Open, the solutions are designed to enable:
- Content Search & Discovery: Refined, detailed
searches of content down to the scene level based on rich metadata
identifying items and context.
- Recommendation Uplift: More informed suggestions of new
content for viewers based on a deeper understanding of video
content.
- Intelligent Closed Captioning: Speech-to-text that can
transcribe audio and improve by learning topic-specific
terminology.
- Spotlighting: Identification of content – such as
violence or adult language – that may require further screening and
labelling
IBM Watson Media is designed to provide companies with a more
comprehensive view of video than other technologies on the market.
IBM Watson Media will provide a deep analysis of objects, people
and words, as well as concepts, emotional overtones and character
personalities. This deep understanding of video can help companies
deliver more relevant content to consumers, provide advertisers
more effective matches for their products and help production teams
find specific parts of videos. Available in September through the
IBM Cloud on the IBM Marketplace, it will provide a packaged
product that can be scaled and used across a company's video
assets.
Helping Fans Navigate and Personalize Their US Open
Visit
In addition to generating AI-powered match highlights, IBM
is elevating the fan experience at the US Open by
incorporating a Cognitive Concierge in the US Open app's Guest Info
feature, which will answer a variety of questions from fans
attending the tournament. Enabled by Watson APIs, the app will
provide information about scoring, schedules, transportation, and
dining options featuring a natural language interface – meaning
attendees can just type their questions and Watson will respond. Depending on the
question, Watson may also plot the
response on an interactive map of the venue, which will also
indicate an attendee's current location, where available.
"An afternoon or evening at the US Open, especially for first
time visitors, has really never been easier to enjoy," said
Kirsten Corio, USTA Managing
Director, Ticket Sales, Hospitality and Digital Strategy.
"Watson's capabilities within the
US Open app will help our fans plan ahead, move around the grounds
at their own pace, and always know where they are and where they
want to go."
This particular application with Watson is also in action as part of IBM's
collaboration with Pebble Beach Resorts in California. In addition, these services are in
place at various hotels, retail stores, and banks, as IBM continues
to help make physical spaces – in the sports world and beyond –
more customizable and responsive to an individual's needs.
Additional IBM Technology Solutions at the US Open
- SlamTracker is now analyzing player and ball position
data, which enables analysis of pace of play and proximity to the
baseline, and is now using Watson Machine Learning to train the
player style models used as part of the Keys-to-the-Match
analysis.
- IBM Cloud helps the USTA scale up in any or all of the
public cloud locations and/or any of the private cloud locations.
In addition, due to the multi-active cloud architecture, if an
entire cloud location were to be taken off-line for maintenance,
the operation of USOpen.org and associated digital platforms would
be unaffected.
- Watson for Cyber
Security helps security analysts who protect the U.S. Open
digital platforms, providing additional context on threats by
mining unstructured data and current security research, drawing
from it's learned knowledge base of over 2 million cybersecurity
documents.
- US Open Digital Platforms – IBM designed, developed, and
is hosting the US Open's MobileWeb for iPhone and Android
platforms, all of which share scores, highlights, and stories from
the tournament.
About IBM Watson
Watson makes sense of the
breadth and diversity of the world's structured and unstructured
data across a variety of industries, including sports, medicine,
travel, retail, and many others. For more information on IBM
Watson, visit: ibm.com/watson/.
About IBM Research
For more than seven decades, IBM
Research has defined the future of information technology with more
than 3,000 researchers in 12 labs located across six continents.
Scientists from IBM Research have produced six Nobel Laureates, 10
U.S. National Medals of Technology, five U.S. National Medals of
Science, six Turing Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of
Sciences and 20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of
Fame. For more information about IBM Research,
visit www.ibm.com/research.
CONTACT:
Chris
Andrews
IBM Media Relations
914-945-1630
candrews@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM