Sports channel ESPN launches AI-based highlighting of famous scenes, but is criticized for omitting necessary parts



News articles summarizing the highlights and summaries of sports games are great content for both those who watched the game live and those who want to know more about it later, as they allow users to check the scenes where points were scored and records, and look back on exciting moments.

ESPN , an American sports channel, has released a project in which AI writes news summaries of games, but it has been pointed out that the news 'lacks important nuances that are always included when written by humans.'

ESPN's AI-generated sports recaps are already missing the point - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/10/24240955/espn-generative-ai-reports-womens-soccer-lacrosse-premier-league



ESPN announced that it will use AI technology to create summary articles for sporting events starting September 6, 2024. The company plans to start by providing coverage of the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) , and to expand to other sports in the future. In making the announcement, ESPN said, 'The AI-generated match summaries are intended to provide fans with previously unavailable content and enhance information on sports that are not being adequately covered. As match summaries for some sports do not currently exist on ESPN digital platforms, the AI-generated summaries will be a tool to supplement existing coverage, not a replacement for existing coverage.' In addition, AI-generated summaries are reviewed by human editors to ensure quality and accuracy, and content created by AI is always marked 'ESPN Generative AI Services,' ensuring quality and transparency.



However, blogger Parker Molloy points out that ESPN's AI-generated sports news is a very bland and basic article that misses important nuances. According to Molloy, the soccer match held on September 8, 2024 was the retirement match of Alex Morgan , a legendary figure in the American soccer world, and although Morgan's team lost the match, there were moving speeches and performances after the match, but the news of the match summary generated by the AI did not mention that the match was Morgan's retirement match or that there was a moving scene after the match. Molloy pointed out that 'this obvious omission raises serious questions about the ability of AI to capture the context and emotional weight of newsworthy events.'

Sports media Awful Announcing also pointed out the ESPN AI article, saying that the initial summary of the game only included a standard summary of how the game unfolded, who scored the goals, and the result, but no mention of Morgan anywhere. The article was revised the next morning to include a short paragraph about Morgan's retirement.



Awful Announcing said, 'ESPN stressed that human editors review the content for quality and accuracy, but it's unclear whether anyone noticed the absence of Morgan or whether they felt it was unnecessary for the news of the game results. While the AI summary is certainly factual, the article's omission of Morgan's retirement, a major contributor to the NWSL and US women's soccer, shows that AI services cannot replicate the human writers' ability to view sports games from a 360-degree perspective. What value is it in providing fans of underserved sports with a low-quality AI summary that doesn't tell the whole story?'

Concerns that AI will take away jobs have been raised, with strikes calling for the use of AI to be regulated , and strikes over the use of AI in games. In fact, Bloomberry, a labor market analysis company, analyzed jobs that have been negatively affected by the emergence of generative AI such as ChatGPT, and found that writing and translation jobs have been strongly affected, and journalists and writers are becoming more sensitive to the introduction of AI in the media.

What is the result of a data-based analysis of 'the freelance job that is most taken over by AI'? - GIGAZINE



Columnist Tom Jones claims that ESPN's AI work on game summaries for some sports will allow human journalists to do more influential work, but points out that the current scope is still experimental and there's nothing to prevent AI articles from being written for more sports in the future. Regarding the concerns of sports journalists, Jones said, 'Instead of hiring new journalists, ESPN has chosen to entrust the work of AI to sports that have historically received little coverage, such as soccer and lacrosse. This is a machine-based job with the aim of making journalists obsolete.'

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