WHO WANTS A.I. MICHAELS AT THE OLYMPICS WHEN AL SHOULD BE USED FOR REAL?
The Games are best known for legendary hosts, such as the man with the most famous call — “Do you believe in miracles?” — and using past appearances for a 10-minute synopsis is a late-life cheap shot
They can host the Olympics in Paris or Haiti or Timbuktu. They can let swimmers contend in safety or let them compete in the Seine River at a $1 billion cleanup cost, despite angry French folks using pooping sessions called #JeChieDansLaSeineLe30Juin (“I s— in the Seine on June 30”). They can let them be seen by an average of 27 million viewers, such as Rio de Janeiro, or by only 15.6 million in Tokyo or 10.7 million in China.
They cannot have Al Michaels attached to artificial intelligence.
I don’t care that A.I. Al is 79. He continues to be specified by the most famous call in sportscasting — “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” — and who decided to use his voice representation via his NBC Sports appearances for 16 years? Is this social progress? Or extreme folly? Rather than give him a real life presence under the Eiffel, he’s reduced to a trifle from articulation synthetics — “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock,” where he might use your actual name in a 10-minute synopsis of the events. NBCUniversal thinks seven million people will listen to A.I. Al.
Seven million? Why?
Seriously, why not give Michaels another spot as a daytime anchor? Coverage of the Olympics is synonymous with hallowed names — and I don’t mean Mike Tirico and Maria Taylor — and any revival of ancient audience ratings will depend on how NBC/Peacock perform between 3 a.m. ET and 6 p.m. ET, based on France being six hours ahead of New York and nine hours ahead of California. The Al Michaels on Amazon Prime, for Thursday night football, is still very much the same Al Michaels. Wouldn’t we trust him with any news, including a major story, in the context of history? Who deemed him worthy of machine learning? Sam Altman? Elon Musk?
“When I was approached about this, I was skeptical but obviously curious,” Michaels said in a statement. “Then I saw a demonstration detailing what they had in mind. I said, ‘I’m in.’ ”
How about: I’m Al Michaels, and I’ll be golfing at Riviera?
Forty-four years ago, he sat inside a booth in Lake Placid and announced America’s glorious hockey triumph over the Soviet Union. Now, he’s recapping the day like a fifth-stringer for a corporation paying $7.75 billion for Olympic broadcasts. Who’s in charge of the outfit? “This is the first personalized sports highlights powered by Gen A.I., featuring a legendary voice, in this case the great Al Michaels,” said Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast. “To make this happen, we combined the latest advancements in voice synthesis and Generative A.I. with our sports expertise — and the Peacock platform to create a brand new way for customers to experience the biggest moments from Paris.”
It isn’t my goal to protect Michaels’ legacy. But he just gave NBC a chance to ship him into the desolate ocean, from his home in Los Angeles. The network didn’t want him for the NFL and let Tirico continue his plasticism on Sunday nights. Why return for this?
“It was frightening, but amazing,” Michaels told the Wall Street Journal. “I just felt it was a chance to be a part of something that isn’t necessarily going to take over, but will become a far more instrumental part of every business.”
Sports is too human and emotional ever to be driven by A.I. It’s merely a stunt by a network that should figure out if the Olympics — as we once knew them — are dead. We don’t want the wackadoodle future every four summers. We want the familiar.
Meaning, Michaels. Not some pieced-together robotics, which might break down and allow Al’s NFL reference frowned upon by the International Olympic Committee: “We’ve already had 42 points in the game. You know what that means for some people? A point and a half from the promised land.”
Gambling.
That would counter A.I.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.