\n<\/p>\n
NBC says that there could be nearly 7 million personalized variants of the recaps, and that a team of human editors will review the content before it is released to users. (That layer of quality control will be especially important when it comes to the pronunciation of the athletes\u2019 names.)<\/p>\n
John Jelley,<\/strong> senior vice president of product and user experience at Peacock, said that the scale of the Olympics\u2014the Paris Games will feature 32 sports and more than 300 medal events\u2014made it the perfect place to deploy the technology. \u201cIt would be impossible to deliver a personalized experience with a legendary sportscaster to millions of fans without it,\u201d Jelley said.<\/p>\n It also would have been impossible unless Michaels was fully on board. \u201cThis was born of curiosity because I\u2019m a very curious person,\u201d Michaels said. \u201cI was approached about this project and didn\u2019t really understand too much about it. Believe me, I am no techie by any stretch of the imagination, but I know that, ready or not, here comes artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Like many of us, Michaels has mixed feelings about the proliferation of artificial intelligence\u2014and that goes beyond the realm of sports. For starters, he worries that it will stoke the flames of misinformation, which he called \u201cthe bane of our existence these days.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are being thrown curveballs,\u201d he said. \u201cCan this be manipulated to the point where people are getting either catfished or gaslighted?\u201d<\/p>\n He is also concerned about its implications on the workforce. A longtime Los Angeles resident, Michaels is close friends with a number of Hollywood screenwriters who have shared with him their anxieties about AI\u2019s threat to their own livelihoods. \u201cIt could take jobs away from people, the writers who need to work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But Michaels is also enthralled with AI\u2019s potential for good, like its ability to unlock our understanding of diseases. \u201cThis is a pipe dream,\u201d Michael said, \u201cbut if AI could someday take everything that\u2019s ever been known and researched about cancer and somehow advance the curing of cancer\u2014I mean, now that would be the all-time greatest thing that could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Michaels, 79, may not be a techie, but he is no Luddite either. He is fascinated by artificial intelligence, telling me he wants to learn as much about it as he can.<\/p>\n After NBC approached him about the Olympics project,\u00a0Michaels\u2019s curiosity was piqued and he decided to conduct a personal experiment. He went on ChatGPT and asked it to generate 10 plotlines for a modern-day adaptation of the 1950s-era sitcom Father Knows Best.<\/em> Within seconds, the bot served up a variety of contemporary scenarios\u2014one about the dad\u2019s futile efforts to fix the Wi-Fi router, another about the dad enjoying unexpected viral fame after his kids teach him the ins and outs of social media. Michaels said he was \u201camazed and frightened at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going, There has to be a man inside there. There\u2019s a person inside there,\u201d he marveled. \u201cIt knows what [the show] was. It takes the plot and advances it to 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n He shared the results with his buddy Alec Berg,<\/strong> a longtime TV writer who served as cocreator of Barry,<\/em> who Michaels says responded, \u201cI may have to get into the plumbing business.\u201d<\/p>\n Voice cloning through artificial intelligence has surged in recent months: It has been used by companies to improve efficiencies as well as by rank-and-file internet users to create so-called deepfakes. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, revealed in March that it had created a tool that can recreate a person\u2019s voice using just 15 seconds of recorded audio, but said it would not release it to the public due to concerns over potential misuse. Last year, the popular sports podcaster Bill Simmons<\/strong> revealed<\/a> that his employer, Spotify, was developing AI to recreate its hosts\u2019 voices for advertisements. Just last week, Universal Music Group inked<\/a> a deal with an AI music-tech startup to help artists design their own voice clones.<\/p>\n As for Peacock, president Kelly Campbell<\/strong> indicated that the streamer may not be finished with the technology, though she stressed the importance of \u201censuring that human creativity remains at the core of everything we do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGenerative AI is obviously evolving rapidly,\u201d she added, \u201cso we\u2019ll continue to follow these developments closely and explore the latest advancements to make sure we deliver the best possible experience for Peacock customers.\u201d<\/p>\n Such technology might someday leave voice actors and broadcasters on the sidelines. When he heard the AI recreation of his voice, Michaels could feel his own job being rendered obsolete: \u201cI just sat there and thought, In the next life, I\u2019m going to need a new profession.\u201d<\/p>\n But for now, Michaels views Peacock\u2019s feature as a way to keep him in the mix during this summer\u2019s showcase in Paris. \u201cEven though it\u2019s an odd way to transition to something\u2014not calling the events, not really recording anything\u2014it does keep me somewhat attached to the Olympic Games, which I\u2019ve always loved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n