Artificial Intelligence commentator to debut at Wimbledon

The broadcast booth at the All England Club will look a bit different this summer.

According to a report from TMZ Sports, an artificial intelligence commentator will make its debut at Wimbledon during the July tournament.

Per the report, the All England Club is partnering with IBM and will use their Watsonx AI platform to "produce tennis commentary" for "all highlight packages online." IBM said that the technology has been trained excessively on the "unique language of tennis."

"I see AI as very much complementing the human element, rather than replacing," IBM executive Kevin Farrar said. "You can't replace John McEnroe doing commentary. That human element always needs to be there. It's very much supplementing and complementing."

Wimbledon runs from July 3-16 and on the men's side, will see 36-year-old Novak Djokovic attempt to continue his quest towards his first calendar-year Grand Slam. The all-time leader in Grand Slam men's singles titles has already won the Australian Open and French Open in 2023.

On the women's side, 22-year-old Iga Swiatek will be looking to hold onto her No. 1 ranking after capturing the French Open crown earlier this month.

According to the TMZ Sports report, IBM said that the AI will be designed "with varied sentence structure and vocabulary to make the clips informative and engaging." Wimbledon added that they'll be using Watsonx technology to provide "advanced analytics, including a player's chances of advancing to the finals, given their draw."

July's tournament will also welcome back Belarusian and Russian players after they were banned from competing in 2022 due to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Among the notable players who will be eligible to compete again are Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Russians Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev.