Fox News Flash top sports headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The 2023 U.S. Open, similar to many of the other major tennis tournaments this year, will incorporate game-changing artificial intelligence technology. First serve for the U.S. Open is set to take place Monday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, New York. Millions of fans are once again expected to watch the action via more traditional methods, such as television, while others will likely engage with the tournament via the app and other digital platforms.

Using AI, IBM Watson and hybrid cloud, IBM is expanding the real-time data insights available to fans of the US Open Tennis tournament so they can get even deeper, match-by-match details on their favorite players and rounds as the event unfolds. IBM has been working with the US Open and its host, the United States Tennis Association (USTA), for 30 years to help bring the matches to tennis fans. For 2021 the company has enhanced its digital offerings with new IBM Power Rankings that fans can use to see what the data is saying about players ahead of upcoming matches. Among the newly available insights are "Likelihood to Win," "Ones to Watch," and "Upset Alerts." In addition, the first-time US Open Fantasy Tennis experience was also launched on the USOpen.org

New York (CNN Business)With spectators unable to fill stadiums, sports leagues have to get creative with new forms of digital engagement to keep fans entertained. During the US Open, which started Monday, the US Tennis Association is inviting fans to engage in online debates about some of the sport's most contested questions, with the help of artificial intelligence technology from IBM (IBM). Fans can discuss topics like the most influential players in history, and their arguments will be analyzed by IBM's Watson technology (using the same AI tool that helped a computer take on a top human debater last year). The Open typically draws around 850,000 fans over three weeks. When the USTA announced in June that the Open would be held for the first time with no fans on site, IBM, a longtime sponsor and tech partner of the Tennis Association, was tasked with finding ways to make sure all those people would still tune in.

Fans can become instant "experts" about the players and the tournament match-ups with new AI-powered insights. This year, IBM is partnering again with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and has developed three new tennis-based digital experiences for fans of the US Open. Spectators won't be allowed at the Arthur Ashe Stadium at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, NY when the Grand Slam event begins on Aug. 31, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they will be able to participate remotely with new fan experiences that use artificial intelligence (AI) underpinned by hybrid cloud technologies. IBM has partnered with the USTA for 29 years, but 2018 was the first year that AI-powered tools were used by players and coaches. Last year, IBM introduced the IBM Coach Advisor and IBM Watson OpenScale.

Has it changed sports already? On this episode of StarTalk Sports Edition, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O'Reilly and Chuck Nice investigate the rise of AI in sports. To kick things off, Noah Syken, Vice President of Sports and Entertainment Partnerships at IBM, joins the show to take us inside the lab at IBM. You'll learn about IBM's long history in sports. We discuss their current projects partnering with Wimbledon and the US Open. You'll hear how IBM is taking classic tennis matches and updating them to current broadcast standards using artificial intelligence.

IBM has once again partnered with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and they're using new AI-powered tools during the US Open to deliver AI-generated highlights, real-time stats and match analysis, as well as an onsite experience center where attendees can experience AI in action. There's a new technology solution, IBM Coach Advisor, that uses AI and analytics to quantify a player's physical exertion and endurance and make correlations to match performance, both during regular games and at the US Open. There's also IBM Watson OpenScale, which figures out the most emotion-packed moments on court for highlight reels. This means that fans watching the men's finals with Danlil Medvedev and Rafael Nadal, or watching highlights from the women's finals with Serena Williams and Bianca Andreescu will be able to view the most breath-taking moments thanks to AI. This is different from the traditional way that coaches assess an athlete's mechanics and endurance.

Note: This blog post was authored by Aaron Baughman with Stephen Hammer, Eythan Holladay, Eduardo Morales and Gary Reiss. Tennis play at the US Open consists of 254 matches in the men's and women's singles events totaling tens of thousands of points. During the tournament's two weeks, many matches are played in parallel, and it's virtually impossible for any tennis fan, or the editorial team at the United States Tennis Association (USTA), to capture any sizable percentage of the best points. To help solve this challenge, IBM built an AI system that clips and creates candidate highlight videos and assigns a fair excitement score, all within two minutes of the end of each match. Every highlight is ranked so that tennis fans and video editors at the USTA and its broadcast partners can see the most exciting points of the tournament, while minimizing the influence of player gestures, match analytic score, player rank, player age and crowd size.

Nearly all established sports are going through some degree of hand-wringing over attracting younger fans as their older core ages out. The death of monoculture and explosion of entertainment options, many accessible without leaving one's bedroom, have seen attendance drops across the board. MLB and NFL teams have fallen over themselves installing on-site daily fantasy lounges to lure second-screeners. Even the hidebound International Olympic Committee has made transparent plays for youth, most recently with the addition of skateboarding, surfing and three-on-three basketball to next year's Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The demographic they're so thirsty for could be found in droves over the weekend at New York's Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, where three days of sold-out crowds turned out for the biggest video game competition of all time – the Fortnite World Cup – where a 16-year-old from Pennsylvania named Kyle Giersdorf (aka Bugha) brought home the winner's share of $3m with a dominant performance in Sunday's solos competition.

Tennis fans have descended on New York to watch the world's best players at the US Open -- one of four Grand Slam tennis tournaments in the world. With so much action on the courts, staying on top of the matches is a nonstop job. But officials are employing extra help, in the form of artificial intelligence.

US Open tennis players are turning to artificial intelligence from IBM's Watson to up their game on the court. The tech giant has partnered with the US Tennis Association (USTA) for over 25 years, but this year is the first time players in the tournament, which takes place in Flushing, Queens, will harness IBM's AI applications to help improve their performance. Watson is able to ingest hours of footage in a matter of minutes, automatically serving up key points and stats so that coaches can create detailed reports for players to use in subsequent matches. It also creates an indexed database of player footage that they can continuously draw from. Madison Keys, the US Open runner-up last year, is just one of several players taking advantage of the technology in the hopes that it will help her take home her first Grand Slam trophy.