On Wednesday, NBC announced plans to use an AI-generated clone of famous sports commentator Al Michaels' voice to narrate daily streaming video recaps of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, which start on July 26. The AI-powered narration will feature in "Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock," NBC's streaming service. But this new, high-profile use of voice cloning worries critics, who say the technology may muscle out upcoming sports commentators by keeping old personas around forever.
NBC says it has created a "high-quality AI re-creation" of Michaels' voice, trained on Michaels' past NBC appearances to capture his distinctive delivery style.
The veteran broadcaster, revered in the sports commentator world for his iconic "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" call during the 1980 Winter Olympics, has been covering sports on TV since 1971, including a high-profile run of play-by-play coverage of NFL football games for both ABC and NBC since the 1980s. NBC dropped him from NFL coverage in 2023, however, possibly due to his age.
Michaels, who is 79 years old, shared his initial skepticism about the project in an interview with Vanity Fair, as NBC News notes. After hearing the AI version of his voice, which can greet viewers by name, he described the experience as "astonishing" and "a little bit frightening." He said the AI recreation was "almost 2% off perfect" in mimicking his style.
The Vanity Fair article provides some insight into how NBC's new AI system works. It first uses a large language model (similar technology to what powers ChatGPT) to analyze subtitles and metadata from NBC's Olympics video coverage, summarizing events and writing custom output to imitate Michaels' style. This text is then fed into an unspecified voice AI model trained on Michaels' previous NBC appearances, reportedly replicating his unique pronunciations and intonations.
It'll be similar to the internet where AI generated posts and ads are engaged by bots. No real people needed at any part of the process so we can do other things.