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Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has harnessed the power of its cloud technologies to drive multiple initiatives throughout the Olympic Games Paris 2024 (Paris 2024). These efforts were made to empower media professionals in their coverage of the Games, while also elevating the engagement of worldwide sports fans through a range of innovative applications.

“Alibaba plays an essential role when it comes to supporting technology during the Olympic Games, greatly increasing the efficiency and sustainability of Olympic Games operations. Our partnership also extends beyond the Olympic Games, with Alibaba playing a defining role in our Olympic AI Agenda, helping us harness the great potential of AI in a responsible way. All these examples highlight how Alibaba is the perfect partner when it comes to shaping our digital future,” said Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Enriching Media Asset Management with Deep-learning Archiving Solution

Alibaba Cloud has collaborated with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to launch a Media Archiving AI Solution. This cloud-based solution provides enhanced visual search functions, automatic categorisation of multimedia content, and video highlight production through AI-powered media asset management services.

The IOC Media Archiving AI solution marks a significant breakthrough in sports media archiving. The solution’s automatic video highlight generation, powered by Alibaba Cloud’s visual AI, identifies and compiles memorable moments in the games of boxing and archery during Paris 2024. This feature assists media professionals with their video storytelling, enriching the game-viewing experience for the global audience.

Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary AI algorithms streamline the indexing and categorisation of the decades-old Olympic audiovisual and photo collections, making the Olympic Archive more searchable, and therefore, enhancing content discovery while optimising the media asset management workflows.

“We are thrilled to support the IOC’s AI Agenda, which was inaugurated in April this year,” said Selina Yuan, President of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “Our cloud-based AI initiatives are designed to help transform the experience for media professionals and the global followers of the Olympic Games. We remain committed to delivering our innovations that help make the Olympic Games more efficient, engaging sustainable and inclusive for all stakeholders.

The debut of Smart Virtual Boxing at the Alibaba Wonder Avenue

At the Alibaba Wonder Avenue (AWA), Alibaba Cloud also debuted its Smart Virtual Boxing project. Alibaba Cloud’s proprietary LLM Qwen was applied to enable analysis of the moves and performances of each player during the Virtual Boxing match, providing real-time commentary in both English and French of each player’s approach and predicting their performance in the next round, thereby enriching the spectator experience.

“Virtual sports are increasingly popular worldwide, enhancing accessibility and encouraging more diverse participation in sports,” Yuan added. “We are committed to expanding the benefits driven by innovative technologies to both traditional sports and e-sports disciplines.”

Accentuating Key Games Moments with 360-degree Slow Motion Replays

During Paris 2024, Multi-Camera Replay Systems by OBS Cloud, a collaborative initiative between the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) and Alibaba Cloud, provided 360-degree, frame-freeze slow-motion replays. The footage was sent to the cloud, where Alibaba Cloud’s AI-driven computing capabilities enabled live spatial reconstruction and real-time 3D rendering before being shared as replays, which facilitated a deeper understanding of pivotal game moments and were made available on OBS’ Content+ platform for comprehensive media analysis to all Media Rights-Holders (MRHs).

The systems produced and delivered thousands of replay clips, covering a range of sports including basketball, gymnastics, tennis, beach volleyball and rugby sevens. The Multi-Camera Replay Systems is part of the newly-launched OBS Cloud 3.0, which was used as the main method to distribute remote content to support MRHs’ Olympics broadcasting coverage, including the spectacular Opening Ceremony of Paris 2024 that attracted tens of millions of viewers worldwide.

“Technologies like Alibaba Cloud’s technologies help us tell the stories of the best athletes in the world, and also the stories of the world coming together in ways which are more exciting and more inspirational. Having partners like Alibaba that help us bring this dream to life are very valuable for us,” said Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of OBS.

Cloud Memento Enhances Spectator Engagement with Animated Videos

To create a more entertaining and engaging spectator experience, Alibaba Cloud unveiled Cloud Memento, an innovative tool that transforms participants’ static images into immersive motion videos with the help of AI technology. Olympic fans had the opportunity to experience this transformative technology first-hand at three iconic venues: the Eiffel Tower Stadium, Champs De Mars Arena, and Invalides.

In addition to cheering for their favourite athletes from the sidelines, spectators could take home a video of themselves performing sports from the Olympic Games, such as archery, beach volleyball, judo and wrestling created by the latest intelligent cloud-based innovation through Cloud Memento. The videos also feature historic landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower using cloud-based smart technology converting 2D snapshots into dynamic animated videos, showcasing complex sports moves with remarkable consistency and continuity.

Colorizing Century-old Olympic Archive Footage

Alibaba Cloud helped restore and colourize Olympic archive footage from the Olympic Games Paris 1924, allowing the contemporary audience to experience these iconic moments in enhanced viewing quality and vivid colours. Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud utilised its colourisation technology to produce “To the Greatness of Her,” an 8-minute short film highlighting the evolution of gender equality in sports. This film, featuring restored and colorised photographs of celebrated female athletes, was showcased at the Alibaba Evening in Paris.

Sustainability Solution Supports Minimizing Power Wastage during Games

In addition, Alibaba Cloud supported the IOC in deploying its data-driven sustainability solution – Energy Expert – to help measure and analyze the electricity consumption at the competition venues during Paris 2024. Based on the integrated cloud-based intelligence and the deep-learning-based AI models from Alibaba Cloud, Energy Expert provided accurate analysis to produce venue-specific forecasts and recommendations such as power demand optimization to minimize power wastage for future Games.

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