When Major League Soccer (MLS) announced plans to deploy AI-powered tools in its recruiting program starting at the tail end of this year, the eyebrows of skeptics were raised. The MLS will be working with London-based startup ai.io, and its'aiScout' app to help the league discover amateur players around the world. This unprecedented collaboration is the first time the MLS will use artificial intelligence in its previously gatekept recruiting program, forcing many soccer enthusiasts and AI fans to reckon with the question: has artificial intelligence finally entered the mainstream in the professional soccer industry? There is no doubt that professional sports have been primed for the potential impact of artificial intelligence. Innovations have the potential to transform the way we consume and analyze games from both an administrative and fan standpoint.

Fox News Flash top sports headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Major League Soccer is taking an innovative approach to scouting. The league has partnered with ai.io, the makers of mobile phone scouting app aiScout, in an effort to discover new soccer talent across the North American continent. Every MLS first team clubs, as well as MLS Next Pro and MLS Next teams, are expected to have access to the AI-powered platform.

They can only dream of what it's like to burst onto the field in The Big Show on Opening Day, but Purdue University outfielders Cam Thompson and Curtis Washington Jr. are among thousands of college baseball players with access to more data-juiced tech than ever to use in the hopes of getting to the majors. One of the tools their team has tested tracks and visualizes every joint in their bodies to measure and analyze their dynamic movements, helping them become a split-second faster on the base paths or gain an edge on runners when they throw home. "I was the slowest on the team," said Thompson in a video describing Purdue's use of 3D Athlete Tracking, or 3DAT, technology developed by Intel, which captures video footage and applies computer vision and deep learning to digitize an individual player's skeletal data and calculate biomechanics. The data and analytical insights gave Thompson and his coaches information revealing that he was bent over just slightly when launching himself from a base. "To the eye, you might not see this, but those first four or five steps were actually slowing him down," said John Madia, director of Baseball Player Development at Purdue.