Giants believe deal with AI company is sound decision that will expand fan experience at Oracle Park
· Yahoo Sports
Artificial intelligence is infiltrating Oracle Park. Its arrival will be gradual.
The San Francisco Giants announced Monday that they have partnered with ElevenLabs, an artificial intelligence company, on a multi-year agreement.
Visit betsport24.es for more information.
Day 1 of the partnership saw their group, including the CEO, move into their newly-named ElevenLabs suite next to the press box on the lower level. The suite was long held for Salesforce until Monday's Giants game against the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Giants said in a statement that this partnership will "deploy AI voice and audio technology throughout the ballpark to elevate the fan experience."
What exactly that means is to be determined, said Giants chief information officer Bill Schlough, who has been with the team for 28 years.
"This is brand new," Schlough said. "We're exploring with them ways that we can leverage their voice technology to help us from a business perspective."
This does not mean that Giants fans will have the full AI experience when they walk into Oracle Park. But the opportunities the partnership opens are broad.
ElevenLabs creates AI-rendered voices and translations. Its business is seeping into the entertainment industry already.
First Lady Melania Trump used the AI company to replicate her voice for the audiobook version of her autobiography, "Melania."
The ElevenLabs website and phone application have a database of AI-rendered celebrity voices that can be downloaded to read various texts, such as audiobooks and articles. Kind of like the AI version of Cameo, an application in which you can buy a personal video from your favorite celebrity.
Some of the AI voices available are of those of celebrities who have died, including Jerry Garcia, Maya Angelou, Burt Reynolds and Laurence Olivier.
Could the Giants do something similar with their late greats, such as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey or a broadcaster such as Lon Simmons? That's a tricky space because it requires approval from the person's estate and is not on the team's radar now, Schlough said.
Connecting the MLB ballpark phone application to the Oracle Park in-game experience is a likelier possibility. One option is to use AI to translate the ballpark's scoreboard content, broadcast, or performances to different languages - Korean, Spanish, etc.
Outfielder Jung Hoo Lee's arrival from the Korea Baseball Organization brought a large Korean audience to the Giants. When the content production team churned out videos of manager Tony Vitello and shortstop Willy Adames visiting Lee in Korea this offseason, a significant chunk of the viewership on YouTube came from Korea, Schlough said.
"We have a huge following in Korea and every Saturday we wear Gigantes uniforms," he said. "Being able to take all our content and authentically translate it to other languages. … That's one of their sweet spots. We don't really have the capacity to translate everything we have into other languages, let alone in an authentic manner."
Other options they're discussing is opting out of the music licensing hassle and creating AI-generated music during games. Going full AI, musically, might take a lot of the fun out of the game's natural pauses. The Giants have a fan-voted sing along to their song of choice in the seventh inning, for example, and DJ Umami blasting hit song mixes before games and between innings.
Schlough said the AI-generated music could be used for the Giants' social media and content production, not just the ballpark experience. Another idea that's been tossed around is to use the technology, through the ballpark app, to translate closed captions or spoken word for hearing-impaired or visually-impaired viewers.
ElevenLabs is based in New York, but an AI partnership with San Francisco's baseball team, near the birthplace of this movement, is fitting.
"This is the first partnership that I'm aware of for ElevenLabs," Schlough said. "I think we're on the leading edge with experimenting in this space."
This article originally published at Giants believe deal with AI company is sound decision that will expand fan experience at Oracle Park.