China's AI disrupts the Paris Olympics

Under the scorching heat, the Paris Olympics has become a hot topic for everyone. But no one expected that China's AI "black technology" would shoulder the heavy responsibility of broadcasting the Olympics.

On August 2nd, the International Olympic Committee announced at a press conference that the viewership of the Paris Olympics has reached a record high, with the streaming viewership on the internet surpassing the total of the past two Olympics.

This signifies a huge change in the way audiences watch. Yannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services, stated that this year, cloud computing has surpassed satellite for the first time as the main broadcasting method for the Olympics, with an estimated half of the global population tuning in.

He revealed that behind the broadcasting of the Olympics, the signal distribution is supported by Chinese AI cloud service provider Alibaba Cloud, with over two-thirds of the signals being distributed globally through its cloud service network.

Unlike previous years, leveraging Alibaba Cloud's AI capabilities, this cloud-based broadcast has saved a significant amount of on-site manpower and one-time construction investment, greatly improving efficiency.

Yannis mentioned that compared to the previous Olympics, the planned content production for this event has increased by 15%-20%, with the actual production volume possibly growing by 40%. However, due to the use of cloud technology, the area of the Olympic Broadcasting Center has actually decreased by nearly 23%.

The benefits of "going to the cloud" not only include faster distribution and cost reduction, but more importantly, the deep application of AI technology.

Olympic Broadcasting Services introduced that the Paris Olympics will use a multi-camera replay system, similar to "time-slice". Shots that Hollywood studios take days to edit can be synthesized and produced in just a few seconds on Alibaba Cloud, and directly applied to the live signal.

Additionally, AI technologies such as Alibaba Cloud's 360-degree live special effects, black-and-white image AI color restoration, etc., have been showcased in the Olympic broadcast.

In fact, since 2017, Olympic Broadcasting Services has been working with Alibaba Cloud to "move public signals to the cloud", further increasing the proportion of cloud broadcasting for this edition of the Paris Olympics.

Yannis believes that the coverage capability of cloud infrastructure is even higher than satellite broadcasting, but the cost is much lower compared to satellite broadcasting. At the same time, cloud computing has better real-time capabilities compared to satellite broadcasting.

A technical professional who has worked on TV broadcasts for the Beijing, London, and Rio Olympics explained, "Even with low-orbit satellite broadcasting, it takes around 5 seconds or more to receive the signal from the venue, while cloud networks can significantly reduce this latency."

This is crucial for broadcasting agencies, as an industry insider revealed, "Broadcasters usually add a certain delay when airing to help them process faster, such as adding subtitles and dealing with sudden events at the venue."

Therefore, the International Olympic Committee stated that this is another significant technological advancement since the start of satellite TV broadcasting at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics For Alibaba Cloud, which has been exploring landing scenarios, "disrupting the Olympics" has become a key roadshow and practice for them