Indian tech giant deploys ‘secret weapon’ to give players an edge at this year’s Australian Open
Infosys has developed an app that is replacing teams of sports statisticians, giving players more of a competitive edge at this year’s Australian Open.
Almost three-quarters of the elite Australian Open players have a tool in their pockets that helps them identify crucial shot selection to outplay their opponents.
A single app is set to replace the teams of statisticians employed by professional tennis players and shows how the fast-evolving AI technology is transforming the sporting world.
Indian tech giant Infosys – which has been the Australian Open’s innovation partner for the past six years – has launched a new AI platform that provides match insights to coaches, players and the general public.
The app has two levels of access, with deep match data cordoned off for tennis professionals. Raghavan Subramanian, global head of Infosys Tennis Platform, said AI was changing the way players were coached, with the app able to drill down on the exact turning points of matches, offering valuable insights to how a player can improve.
Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley said Infosys has helped the tournament raise the bar and serve up new experiences for fans using digital technologies.
“We’re excited to see the leaps being made with AI at AO 2024,” he said. “AI is enabling new dimensions of interactivity for fans and insight for players, not to mention the speed and scale it brings to our content delivery.”
It comes as the Australian Open this year has launched a start-up ‘incubator’ AO Labs, partnering with entrepreneurial smaller tech firms to unveil ground breaking innovations and insights into player performance, coaching, fan engagement, broadcast, digital and original content.
One of these is Coaches Box a live insights platform for coaches and players.
The Infosys AI technology is one of the most-changing tools players and their support staff can use.
Mr Subramanian demonstrated how the technology worked, opening a match analysis of Novak Djokovic’s defeat last week of Alexei Popyrin in four sets.
“Most of what we have shown you is statistical in nature – we don’t really need hard AI. But let me show you something that uses real AI,” he said.
“What we are now going to show you are points where we believe this is a positive for Djokovic, in spite of local Djokovic’s opponent having an advantage at some point in the rally Djokovic managed to win the point and we pick that shot when our AI believes where Djokovic was under threat the most, on the defensive the most.
“Now this is a piece of data that today a human being will have to really pore over lots and lots of footage before they can do this but we have delivered the intelligence to do this.”
With a click of a button, a player or coach can also view the footage when the turning point occurred.
“You can see our AI believes the crucial shot where he was defensive the most was the third shot (in the rally) but somehow Djokovich continues to win this point. This is a demonstration of a pure AI use case where we have built AI to understand the sport.”
Players and coaches have embraced the platform as data capturing the minutiae of match play becomes more important in obtaining a competitive edge. Mr Subramanian said more than 70 per cent of players and coaches at the Australian Open were using Infosys’s AI-enhanced match analysis.
But he couldn’t drill down the specifics of who was using it, or if it was more popular among top seed players, citing privacy.
“There is a privacy concern about not going beyond a certain piece of information that’s outside of our remit of what we are allowed to observe and not allowed to observe. What we are allowed to observe is, on average, how long the spend when the long into this (app). They spend on average six minutes and 25 seconds.”
Mr Subramanian said the technology – which also being deployed across the NBA and Infosys is also in talks with other sports, including cricket – aimed to create a more immersive experience.
“We’ve done this already for NBA, with the Knicks team in basketball, as well as for the New York Rangers through our partnership with Madison Square Garden. We have created the AI highlights tool for the Madison Square Garden social media team so they are able to quickly create a highlights reel that they can post to the social media
“We’ve taken what we have built in tennis and several of the things can be reused (in other sports). We’ve developed new models for basketball, as well as ice hockey. So we’ve been able to extend it to other sports. We’ve had discussions with various other sports, cricket included
“The result we want to achieve will continue to stay the same, which is how can we enhance the fan experience, how can we enhance the stakeholder experience, whether it be the fan, the players and the coaches.”
Tennis Australia is also using the technology to package match highlights for social media in near real time, saving hours of video editing.
It is part of the swag of AI-powered goodies that Infosys has unveiled at this year’s Australian Open. Other technology includes ‘Gen AI Story Cards’, which provide contextual insights in a card-like format as a match progresses.
“AI Match Bytes, using Gen AI, creates match story visual cards and narrates the story of a match to fans,” Infosys. Meanwhile a ‘Win Predictor’ tracks the probabilities of victory as the match progresses on court.
The same technology is being embraced at other major sporting events Infosys partners with overseas.
At Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, basketball and ice hockey fans have also tapped into the potential of AI, said Kevin Marotta, a senior vice president at associated sports media group MSG Networks.
“We know our fans expect immediate highlights of momentous dunks or goals, and other memorable plays throughout our game coverage, and Infosys’ AI technology (allows) us to deliver these types of highlights quickly to our rabid Knicks and Rangers fans,” Mr Marotta said.
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