The AI ​​version of Al Michaels will provide Olympic recaps on Peacock

Legendary sportscaster Al Michaels will be giving personalized daily recaps of the Paris Olympics on Peacock — well, it will be done by Al Michaels’ AI-generated voice. In practice, the effect is a lot like hearing a sportscaster’s voice in a video game Go crazywith the difference that it tells about real sports, which in this case means a personalized report from the Olympic Games.

Here’s how it works. To set up what NBC calls “Your Daily Olympics Recap” in the Peacock app, enter your name (the AI ​​voice can greet “most” people by name, NBC says in a press release) and select up to three types of interest sports and up to two types of highlights (for example, “Top Competitions” or “Viral & Trending Moments”). Then each morning you’ll receive a recap hosted by Michaels.

To support protect against potential AI-generated oddities, NBC says that “a team of NBCU editors will review all content, including audio and clips, for quality assurance and accuracy before recaps are made available to users.” Still, I feel like there’s a chance that someone’s recap will feature an AI-generated hallucination voiced aloud by Al Michaels, like calling out the wrong athlete or screwing up some unusual sports result.

As per the press release, the voice was trained through Michaels’ appearances on NBC and the experience was built internally, says NBCUniversal’s John Jelly Edge in a statement. “Our internal Peacock team of engineers, product managers and data scientists has developed a proprietary integration, optimization and validation process cutting-edge large tongue model and voice synthesis technology to create this experience.”

In the press demo where I heard the voice, it sounded convincing, but that’s what you’d expect from a demo. The real test will be generating millions of unique clips—NBC estimates there could be nearly 7 million personalized versions in the U.S. during the games—combining dozens of sports, each with its own unique terminology, and identifying a range of athletes from around the world.

Peacock recaps hosted by AI Al Michaels will be available starting July 27 in supported browsers and on the Peacock apps for iOS and iPadOS. NBC declined to comment on whether the recaps would be available on Android.

The first edition of the recap will feature highlights from the opening ceremony, available to anyone interested. Personalized recaps will begin on July 28.

Disclosure: Comcast, owner of NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, EdgeParent company.

Correction, June 26:A previous version of this article incorrectly reported which platforms the recaps would be available on. NBC did not say whether the feature would come to Android.