IOC president Thomas Bach said artificial intelligence can help identify talented athletes “in every corner of the world” as he unveiled the Olympic AI Agenda in London on Friday.

Bach, speaking at Olympic Park, which hosted the 2012 Games, said the Olympic movement needs to lead change as the global AI revolution gathers pace.

“Today we are making another step to ensure the uniqueness of the Olympic Games and the relevance of sport, and to do this, we have to be leaders of change, and not the object of change,” said the International Olympic Committee president.

The former fencing gold medallist said it was vital to have a “holistic” approach to create an “overall strategy for AI and sport”.

Bach, speaking less than 100 days before the start of the Paris Olympics, said “unlike other sectors of society, we in sport are not confronted with the existential question of whether AI will replace human beings”.

“In sport, the performances will always have to be delivered by the athletes,” he said. “The 100 metres will always have to be run by an athlete -– a human being. Therefore, we can concentrate on the potential of AI to support the athletes.

“AI can help to identify athletes and talent in every corner of the world. AI can provide more athletes with access to personalised training methods, superior sports equipment and more individualised programmes to stay fit and healthy.”

Bach said other advantages of AI included fairer judging, better safeguarding and improved spectator experience.

The Olympic AI Agenda comes from the IOC AI working group -– a high-level panel of global experts including AI pioneers and athletes, set up last year.

When asked about the potential negatives of AI, Bach was keen to emphasise the importance of free choice in sport.

“He and she, or the parents, must still have the free choice,” said the German. “So a guy who is then maybe identified as a great athlete in wrestling must still have the chance to play tennis and cannot be sorted out from these sports.”

– Vonn ‘jealous’ –

Former Olympic skiing champion Lindsey Vonn, who also spoke at the London event, told AFP she envied current athletes, who could use AI to enhance their training.

“I’m very jealous that I didn’t have any of this technology when I was racing because I just really feel that it’s going to enhance the athlete’s experience all around,” she said.

“Athletes can utilise AI in training to enhance their knowledge from training like, for example, skiing on the mountain but then also off the mountain in the gym recovery times,” added the American.

“The more we understand about your body, about the sport, about performance, the better you can adjust as an athlete.

Vonn, 39, also said AI would be a vital tool for talent identification, particularly in nations without the resources to scout talent.

“You can give them access to AI through a cell phone and you do a series of tests and they can identify ‘OK this athlete would be a great, a 40-metre dash sprinter, or this athlete would potentially be an amazing high jumper,” she said. 

“You have the ability then to find the talent and give them resources through things they already have like a cell phone.”

Meta on Thursday introduced an improved AI assistant built on new versions of its open-source Llama large language model.

Meta AI is smarter and faster due to advances in the publicly available Llama 3, the tech titan said in a blog post.

“The bottom line is we believe Meta AI is now the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use,” Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a video on Instagram.

Being open source means that developers outside of Meta are free to customize Llama 3 as they wish and the company may then incorporate those improvements and insights in an updated version.

“We’re excited about the potential that generative AI technology can have for people who use Meta products and for the broader ecosystem,” Meta said.

“We also want to make sure we’re developing and releasing this technology in a way that anticipates and works to reduce risk.”

That effort includes incorporating protections in the way Meta designs and releases Llama models and being cautious when it adds generative AI features to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, according to Meta.

“We’re also making Meta AI much easier to use across our apps. We built it into the search box right at the top of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram messenger, so any time you have a question, you can just ask it right there,” said Zuckerberg in the video.

AI models, Meta’s included, have been known to occasionally go off the rails, giving inaccurate or bizarre responses in episodes referred to as “hallucinations.”

Examples shared on social media included Meta AI claiming to have a child in the New York City school system during an online forum conversation.

– Slow and steady –

Meta AI has been consistently updated and improved since its initial release last year, according to the company.

“Meta’s slower approach to building its AI has put the company behind in terms of consumer awareness and usage, but it still has time to catch up,” said Sonata Insights chief analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

“Its social media apps represent a massive user base that it can use to test AI experiences.”

By weaving AI into its family of apps, Meta will quickly get features powered by the technology to billions of people and benefit from seeing what users do with it.

Meta cited the example of refining the way its AI answers prompts regarding political or social issues to summarize relevant points about the topic instead of offering a single point of view.

Llama 3 has been tuned to better discern whether prompts are innocuous or out-of-bounds, according to Meta.

“Large language models tend to overgeneralize, and we don’t intend for it to refuse to answer prompts like ‘How do I kill a computer program?’ even though we don’t want it to respond to prompts like ‘How do I kill my neighbor?’,” Meta explained.

Meta said it lets users know when they are interacting with AI on its platform and puts visible markers on photorealistic images that were in fact generated by AI.

Beginning in May, Meta will start labeling video, audio, and images “Made with AI” when it detects or is told content is generated by the technology.

Llama 3, for now, is based in English but in the coming months Meta will release more capable models able to converse in multiple languages, the company said.

The US House of Representatives will again vote Saturday on a bill that would force TikTok to divest from Chinese parent company ByteDance or face a nationwide ban.

The measure has been written into a massive $61 billion aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which could ease its passage in both chambers of the US Congress.

Under the bill, ByteDance would have to sell the app within a few months or be excluded from Apple and Google’s app stores in the United States.

It would also give the US president the authority to designate other applications as a threat to national security if they are controlled by a country deemed hostile.

TikTok slammed the bill, saying it would hurt the US economy and undermine free speech. 

“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill,” a company spokesman said.

He added a ban would “trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy annually.”

Western officials have voiced alarm over the popularity of TikTok with young people, alleging that it is subservient to Beijing and a conduit to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and Beijing.

Joe Biden reiterated his concerns about TikTok during a phone call with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in early April.

The House of Representatives last month approved a similar bill cracking down on TikTok, but the measure got held up in the Senate.