AI in winter sports: What challenges will the 2026 Olympics face
Sports broadcasting is gradually transforming into a data-driven digital platform, rather than just video surveillance.
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of industry, and the technology is demonstrating its capabilities at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, where AI solutions are much more active than in previous Olympics.
Olympic broadcasts are turning into a unique digital platform, with a strong focus on the most loyal fans, the broadcast viewers. However, the other side is no less important – the judges, competition organizers, and athletes, for whom AI becomes an additional decision-making assistant.
Real-time athlete analysis
A common problem in winter sports is the athlete’s blending into the environment – the snow. In skiing and biathlon, even modern cameras sometimes lose quality video tracking.
At these Winter Olympics, challenges are being addressed with the help of AI. Organizers are making extensive use of a technological solution that not only provides viewers with a slow-motion replay, but also three-dimensional motion analysis. It “separates” the athlete from the environment, freezes their image, and the camera can virtually rotate the entire view to a wide angle.
On the other hand, such repetitions, depending on the sport, allow you to assess the angles of turns, landing stability or movement on the track. In addition, it is easier to analyze falls and spot mistakes.
Thus, viewers get a clearer understanding of what technically determined the result, judges an additional source of objectivity when evaluating complex episodes, and athletes and coaches have access to technical analysis that was previously only available after the competition.
Content automation
Another new feature is automatic content processing. The system is based on AI, which first captures an image, then identifies the athlete, event, and specific action: jump, landing, fall, finish, etc. Finally, a language model converts the information into text.
In this case, the system automatically generates a description, creates metadata, and can assign a tag to each episode. Meanwhile, the editor can “communicate” with it in natural language. He only needs to ask for specific episodes, and the algorithms immediately provide them, because they are already tagged automatically.
Conversational assistants and archive search are an extension of this technology – Olympic video footage is transformed into an indexed database that is browsed not by scrolling through time, but by asking questions.
These technologies significantly reduce the need for manual work and prepare the most important highlights for broadcasters, and then create an archive for both competition organizers and viewers.
Fan interaction with AI
Another part of the solution is relevant for Olympic observers and sports fans. The Games use a special AI chat assistant that can answer questions about ongoing events and results in real time, as well as explain sports rules, introduce athletes, and provide summaries of the Olympic Games.
This solution opens up completely new opportunities for viewers to get involved in the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, accessing the most important information quickly and in one place.
The chatbot can be accessed on the official Olympic website (chat window in the lower right corner): https://www.olympics.com/en/milano-cortina-2026
Social media moderation to protect athletes
Along with increased viewer engagement comes another side of the Olympics – a huge flow of content on social media. After an unsuccessful landing, mistake, or defeat, athletes often face insults, outbursts of disappointment from fans, etc. During previous Olympics, this has become one of the most acute problems affecting the psychological state of athletes.
The 2026 Games will see more extensive use of AI in moderation systems that analyze comments across platforms in real time. Algorithms can identify hate speech, abuse, and other inappropriate content and can automatically hide, flag, or forward it to moderators for review.
Importantly, the system not only evaluates individual words, but also the context – the AI analyzes the meaning of the sentence, usage patterns, and sudden bursts of comments. This can suppress negative discussions before they escalate and avoid psychological pressure on athletes.
One of the key partners of the 2026 Olympic Games is Alibaba Cloud, which, together with Olympic Broadcasting Services, is developing and implementing these and other AI solutions. Their technological role is described in more detail in the official Milan-Cortina Marketing and Media Guide.
The Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics are becoming more than just a sporting event – they are acting as a testing ground for how AI will transform content consumption in the coming years. Here, results are interpreted with data, broadcasts are transformed into searchable video archives, viewers receive personalized explanations, and social spaces are automatically moderated.
Credits:
Image:
