ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 15, 2023 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the United States Tennis Association (USTA) today announced digital fan features to appear on USOpen.org and the US Open app, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated spoken commentary. Designed to give fans a more insightful and engaging experience when catching up on key moments from the tournament, IBM watsonx powered AI Commentary utilizes models built, trained, and deployed with watsonx, IBM's AI and data platform. Throughout the entire tournament, AI technology will automate the production of detailed audio narration and captions to accompany US Open highlight videos at unprecedented scale – for every match in the singles draw, across all seventeen courts.

To implement the IBM watsonx powered AI Commentary, experts from IBM iX, the experience design partner within IBM Consulting, worked with the USTA to leverage foundation models within watsonx to build and train AI models in the unique language of tennis. Operating across a hybrid cloud infrastructure enabled by Red Hat OpenShift, generative AI built on these foundation models was applied to produce commentary with varied sentence structure and vocabulary to make the clips informative and engaging.

"Fans accessing the US Open digital experiences this year will be able to experience every singles match, across all seventeen courts, with detailed audio narration and captions accompanying each video – thanks to the power of IBM's watsonx generative AI, specifically trained on the language of tennis," said Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing at IBM. "The AI Commentary feature was developed based on the watsonx enterprise-ready data and AI platform, designed to enable businesses to accelerate generative AI work by leveraging foundation models and machine learning in one place, with their own data."

Also new at this year's US Open, the IBM watsonx powered AI Draw Analysis is a first-of-its-kind tennis statistic for the US Open that utilizes both structured and unstructured data from IBM Power Index & Likelihood to Win to project the level of advantage or disadvantage of all players in the singles draw. Each player will receive an IBM AI Draw Analysis at the start of the tournament, which will be updated daily as the tournament progresses and players are eliminated. Every draw is ranked, allowing fans to click into individual matches and see the projected difficulty of their draw and potential opponents.

"Delivering a digital fan experience that showcases every key moment and storyline from the US Open is always our top priority, and IBM's development leadership continually enables our fans to connect with the US Open in deeper ways every year," said Brian Ryerson, Senior Director, Digital Strategy, USTA. "We're particularly excited this year for fans to experience IBM's AI commentary with watsonx for all Singles Highlights, providing deeper insights into our video highlights than ever before. Additionally, with the watsonx powered AI Draw Analysis fans can easily visualize each player's potential opponents and highlight their complete path to the finals allowing greater insight into each round's potential match ups."

IBM has been the official technology partner of the USTA for more than 30 years. The introduction of these new fan features showcase how they continue to co-create world-class digital experiences that bring the drama and excitement of the US Open to more than 12 million people around the world each year. The watsonx powered AI Commentary and AI Draw Analysis join an already expansive suite of digital fan features including the IBM Power Index, Match Insights, and Likelihood to Win. The US Open's digital experiences are run on the USTA's flexible, open hybrid cloud platform, which integrates technology from dozens of partners, automates key business processes, and secures the entire world-class digital experience of the US Open. 

The 2023 US Open, including its Fan Week, during which the Qualifying tournament is held, runs from August 22 through September 10. 

To see IBMs technology in action, including generative AI Commentary and the daily updated IBM Draw Analysis, visit USOpen.org or on your mobile device via the US Open app, available in the Apple and Android app stores. 

About IBM

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs, and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service. For more information, visit www.ibm.com. 

About USTA

The USTA is the national governing body for the sport of tennis in the U.S. and the leader in promoting and developing the growth of tennis at every level -- from local communities to the highest level of the professional game. A not-for-profit organization, it invests 100% of its proceeds in growing the game. It owns and operates the US Open, one of the highest-attended annual sporting events in the world, and launched the US Open Series, linking summer WTA and ATP World Tour tournaments to the US Open. In addition, it owns approximately 120 Pro Circuit events throughout the U.S. and selects the teams for the Davis Cup, Billie Jean King Cup, Olympic and Paralympic Games. The USTA's philanthropic entity, the USTA Foundation, provides grants and scholarships in addition to supporting tennis and education programs nationwide to benefit under-resourced youth through the National Junior Tennis & Learning (NJTL) network. For more information about the USTA, go to USTA.com or follow the official accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X) and TikTok. 

Media Contact:

rebecca.bernhard@ibm.com 

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