While so much discussion and speculation is being brought towards the introduction of advanced Artificial Intelligence into the business of sports, especially on the performance side (good piece but our friend Leonard Armato on how the balance of predictive performance will have to be hopefully tied to good old fashioned personnel staff), it is really more on the storytelling side that tools like ChatGPT and other similar tools could be a help, and potentially another hindrance, in the business we love.
There were two pieces this past weekend that got us thinking about this even more. A CBS Sunday feature on how AI is helping give more amazing creative tools to those wishing to do so, while at the same time raising the issue of copyrighted content and the ownership of IP by freelancers.
Then there was the piece in the New York Times on the issues AI and ChatGPT are posing for educators, as students can use the tools to create vast written content pieces without actually doing the self-created work, and how that would be policed.
The impact all of these tools, especially as they are refined, can be pretty vast. In areas like notetaking and transcript reporting, AI tools will, or should, help provide vast amounts of accurate printed content for teams, leagues and individuals to use for the good, and to further enhance storytelling to an audience that may not be able to follow or log in to a live event.
On the visual side, tools can probably help enhance the storytelling by time strapped and cash strapped media teams, especially in areas like college campuses, to create even more unique and robust graphics that can be used to augment stories every day and in real time.
On the coverage side, we have already been seeing more rudimentary usage of AI and data to have stories of games reported on where no actual reporter exists. It has enhanced coverage of high school and college games and niche sports that might not have gotten coverage before, and those game stories have been expanded into the reporting funnel with some pickup by wire services and other mass distribution platforms. They have been rudimentary and effective to get the game action and scores out in a very vanilla way, without the nuance of having actual human interaction of the goings on. The AI and Chatbots have served their purpose.
So that’s where the challenges as to what’s next come. We are already seeing the shrinking in person coverage by media outlets big and small as budgets are augmented and shifted. How will AI continue to keep replacing the human interaction for consumers who may not know what they are reading or seeing is coming not from a person, but from a data enhanced tool that can synthesize and literally report, with or without feeling or enhancement, what goes on in an event?
It is all up for intrigue and debate and hopefully a middle ground as to how tools are used, and how enhanced storytelling can benefit from tools coming into the marketplace. Now keep in mind this is not new, and every new form of “media” brought with it its own set of buzz and doomsday scenarios for those used to what came before. Go back as far back as the printing press, and move forward to radio, broadcast TV, talk radio, the internet, podcasting, social media etc. etc. each was going to end storytelling as we knew it.
Well…no.
The goal with AI, like with every other form of change to the system, is to figure out how to use the tools at hand to expand and augment the live event, and the humanity of relationships and storytelling. This past week I saw young content creators draw up vast images as NWSL players were drafted, while in person interaction was listening to and describing the in person emotion of athletes as they heard their name called. As much as we try, or think we can try, that type of emotive face to face experience can still only happen by being there. You are limited in the opportunity of the individual creative experience by machine learning that gives you clarity but less individuality.
Now will that all change as the AI experience improves? Maybe. Will it hurt the need for freelancers or media types who cannot adapt? Sadly yes. Will it open doors for individuals new to the game (literally) who have embraced the use of technology by being open minded and curious? For sure.
So will AI in storytelling help us do better jobs? I think so. Will it kill the value of actual person to person contact and what can be derived from those meetings? I don’t think so as much as people fear. The joy of showing up and the randomness of seeing something we have never seen before, or hearing something we didn’t know about, can still only come from mano a mano interaction, and that is still hard to do in any virtual, data driven experience.
And after all, isn’t that what our business is all about? Hopefully.
So be open minded…be curious about tool adoption…and let’s see where it goes.
