At This Year's U.S. Open, IBM Wants To Give You All The Insta-Commentary You Need

Tennis fans watching the U.S. Open at home or in person this year will get some extra insights delivered by IBM's machine learning technologies. "The way we're thinking about it is: the first time Watson's come to the U.S. Open," says IBM program manager John Kent. IBM is using its cloud-based data-processing tools, including the Watson machine learning suite, to enhance its online videos by automatically generating everything from video captions to automated analyses of ongoing matches. During each match, IBM's online SlamTracker platform provides real-time scores and assessments, pulling in data from officials and on-court speed tracking radar to evaluate players' moves as they happen. "We not only provide the real-time scores, but for each point, try to provide a little bit of insight as to what happened," Kent says. For example, the system can indicate on which areas of the court each player won the most points, how many feet each player moved over the course of a match, and which points were won by unforced error.