A.I. recreation of Al Michaels’ voice will be part of Peacock’s Olympics coverage

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

NBCU announced on Wednesday during an Olympic presentation in New York City that as part of its Paris Olympic coverage, Peacock will use A.I. technology to offer a personalized recap experience for Olympic fans. “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock,” will use generative A.I. and A.I. voice synthesis technology to offer Olympic fans a customized recap of highlights and events from the Games. Each compilation will feature clips from the Olympics coverage and be narrated by an A.I. re-creation of Michaels’ voice. Peacock said the voice comes from using Michaels’ past appearances on NBC. The broadcaster signed off on the use of his voice. Earlier in the week, the company held a brief demonstration for reporters of the Daily Olympic recap, and it certainly sounds like Michaels voice.

“This is the first, personalized sports highlights powered by Gen A.I., featuring a legendary voice, in this case the great Al Michaels,” said Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, said on Wednesday. “To make this happen, we combined the latest advancements in voice synthesis and Generative A.I. with our sports expertise — and the Peacock platform to create a brand new way for our customers 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 on the Peacock app on select mobile and tablet devices. There is a brief set of questions to set up an individual recap based on a consumer’s preferences about the sports they like and highlights they want. (Michaels greets you by name.) The technology uses hundreds of NBC Sports-produced clips each day to generate a playlist of around 10 minutes highlighting the most relevant moments from the prior day for each user. NBCU said a team of editors will review all content, including audio and clips, for quality assurance and accuracy before recaps are made available to users. NBCU said there are seven million variants for the clips.

“When I was approached about this, I was skeptical but obviously curious,” said Michaels, in a statement. “Then I saw a demonstration detailing what they had in mind. 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 sub driver. Peacock said it had 34 million paying subscribers as of March. Per Variety: It has lost roughly $8.5 billion since its launch.

When contacted by The Athletic on his new gig, Michaels cheekily signed off as “Al (or maybe A.I.).”

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(Photo: Kirby Lee / USA Today)