AI recreation of Al Michaels’ voice will be part of Peacock’s Olympic coverage

June 26, 2024

An AI version of Al Michaels is coming to Peacock next month.

NBCU announced Wednesday during an Olympics presentation in New York City that Peacock will use AI technology to provide Olympic fans with a personalized recap as part of its Paris Olympics coverage. “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock” will use generative AI and AI speech synthesis technology to provide Olympic fans with a tailored recap of highlights and events from the Games. Each recap will include snippets of Olympics coverage and will be narrated by an AI recreation of Michaels’ voice. Peacock said the voice is derived from Michaels’ previous appearances on NBC. The network has approved the use of his voice. Earlier this week, the company held a brief demonstration of the Daily Olympic Recap for reporters, and it definitely sounds like Michaels’ voice.

“These are the first personalized sports highlights powered by Gen AI to feature an iconic voice, in this case that of the great Al Michaels,” Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said Wednesday. “To make this possible, we combined the latest advances in speech synthesis and Generative AI with our sports expertise and the Peacock platform to give our customers an entirely new way to experience the biggest moments from Paris.”

The recap will be available to Peacock subscribers starting July 27 at www.peacocktv.com/olympics on all supported web browsers, as well as in the Peacock app on select mobile and tablet devices. There is a short questionnaire to create a customized recap based on the consumer’s preferences in the sports they prefer and the highlights they want. (Michaels greets you by name.) The technology uses hundreds of clips produced by NBC Sports each day to create a roughly 10-minute playlist that highlights the most relevant moments from the previous day for each user. NBCU said a team of editors will review all content, including audio and clips, for quality and accuracy before providing recaps to users. NBCU said there are seven million variations of the clips.

“When I was asked about it, I was skeptical but of course curious,” Michaels said in a statement. “Then I saw a demonstration that explained in detail what they were planning to do. I said, ‘I’m in.'”

Peacock is the streaming home of the Olympics and will stream every sport and event, including all 329 medal events. It will air 5,000 hours of coverage. The company hopes the Olympics will be a significant subscriber driver. Peacock said it had 34 million paying subscribers in March. It has lost about $8.5 billion since its loss, according to Variety.

When contacted by The athlete In his new appearance, Michaels cheekily signed himself “Al (or maybe AI).”