Wimbledon 'Catch Me Up AI' tool courts tennis lovers

Tennis lovers might still be reeling from the disappointment of Andy Murray’s early withdrawal from the Men’s Singles at the Wimbledon but the organisers insists a new artificial intelligence tool will keep them engaged about all the rising stars, from the early stages through to the final with dynamic insights.

Dubbed “Catch Me Up AI”, the feature is the latest tool to come out of IBM’s 34-year partnership with the All-England Club Lawn Tennis Club to drive fan engagement and enhance customer experiences.

The tool provides AI-generated content for player cards with recent stats and play styles that are continually updated throughout the tournament. These player cards will be personalised according to user preferences, using location data and a myWimbledon profile, and will feature both pre-match and post-match content.

The pre-match content will include information on the player’s career and their recent form, as well as win probabilities, while the post-match content will feature key statistics from the contest and a highlights package to catch up on the match.

Wimbledon first launched AI tools back in 2021; Catch Me Up is powered by Granite, IBM’s flagship large language model, available through its Watsonx AI platform.

All England Lawn Tennis Club digital products lead Chris Clements said: “We are committed to offering fans the highest quality Wimbledon experience, whether it’s in person or digitally.

“Generative AI allows us to scale our ability to provide different types of content for fans wherever they are in the world in a way that’s personalised for them. This year’s new Catch Me Up feature will make it easier for fans to follow the key storylines as they emerge throughout The Championships.”

Farrar insists the feature is not designed to cut human roles but is aimed at improving the club’s ability to provide expanded coverage at the Championships.

He added: “What we wanted to do and what Wimbledon wanted to do was to broaden the aperture, to tell more stories about more matches, and pre-match as well as post-match. So that was the goal and that ended up being rendered as Catch Me Up.”

And, with a flood of new talent taking up the reigns of previous legends like Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Serena Willams, these features will help introduce fans to the new stars as well as other parts of the game that previously have not enjoyed the same attention.

“It’s about telling more stories that aren’t being told at the moment potentially. You’ve got a lot of new players up-and-coming, a lot of the old guard coming to the end of their careers, how can we tell stories about those other players?

“These features are enabling that, they’re trying to get stories out there about some of the new players that aren’t being written about at the moment by the content team or journalists – it’s filling a gap,” he concluded.