Covering the World Cup 2018 with AI and automation – Global Editors Network – Medium

The World Cup 2018 is all over. Germany was kicked out in the group stages, Brazil was beaten by Belgium, football didn't come home to England, Croatia with its population of four million people reached the final for the first time ever, only to lose to France in the end. Beyond being glued to our screens to watch the action on pitch, we've been looking at what newsrooms are doing off-pitch to cover the competition… with automation and artificial intelligence. Fox Sports (US) teamed up with IBM Watson to make AI-powered highlight videos, French publication Le Figaro created automated visual summaries, and The Times (UK) launched its very own World Cup Alexa Skill. The US didn't qualify for the World Cup this year, but that didn't stop Fox Sports from airing all 64 matches and teaming up with IBM Watson to create the World Cup highlight machine.