Australian Open is using AI to create Wii-style tennis coverage
One of the world’s biggest tennis tournaments, the Australian Open, is currently taking place in Melbourne, and is using artificial intelligence in a…unique, innovative, and undeniably hilarious way.
Due to licensing and broadcasting rights, not every match of the tournament can be broadcast live. So, to get around this, the event is using generative AI to convert live footage into Nintendo Wii-style animations on a two-minute delay and broadcasting the result on YouTube under the title ‘AO Animated’.
The Australian Open doesn’t have full
broadcast rights for all matches.
So, its YouTube livestream uses AI to generate Nintendo Wii Tennis cartoon avatars that mimics the action on a 2-minute delay.
As a result, this animated clip of Daniel Medvedev smashing his tennis racket… pic.twitter.com/VGVlteA4Rx
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) January 16, 2025
According to ESPN, there are sensors on the tennis courts at Melbourne Park that relay data about the actual matches into a system that uses AI to generate the digital avatar version of the match with just a two-minute delay between the action and the output.
This means that Tennis Australia can broadcast matches in some fashion without breaching broadcasting rights, having sold these to various global partners.
The sensors and digital renditions capture not only the actual tennis gameplay, but also live commentary, crowd noise and reactions, umpire calls, and player actions (like the now-infamous clip of Medvedev smashing the net with his tennis racket).
Tennis Australia debuted this technology last year, but it has been much more successful this year, with around four times as many viewers tuning into the AI-generated footage of matches this year than last.
This is not the first time AI has been used to great effect in the sport of tennis. In 2023, Wimbledon used IBM’s Watson to provide commentary and captions for matches. The AI had been specially trained with information about tennis and had access to large quantities of player data.
Tennis has also long been an early adopter of other technology. The now-ubiquitous Hawk-Eye technology that visually tracks the trajectory of a ball has been in use in tennis since 2006, long before its inclusion in Premier League soccer in 2013.
Featured image credit: Tennis Australia
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