The New AI Play-by-Play Announcer on the Masters App Is Pretty Creepy

A preview of the Artificial Intelligence announcer that will be implemented into the Masters app this year is making the rounds on social media, and it’s awfully scary to watch the technology in action. 

For the 2023 tournament, IBM teamed up with the Masters to provide “AI generated spoken commentary" for more than 20,000 clips posted to the application throughout the event. The Masters famously documents almost every shot hit throughout the tournament. 

According to IBM, the announcer was trained by large language models like ChatGPT to understand golf terminology and analyze the swings in each video. 

Golf Digest’s Stephen Hennessey shared a sneak preview of the AI announcer on Twitter. The clip shows Sepp Straka on the 1st hole at Augusta National, while a male robotic voice describes his shot in detail. 

“Sepp Straka, 28 years old from Austria, is going to hit from the pinestraw on Hole 1. He took stroke two and the ball traveled 162 yards into the greenside bunker,” the robot commentator said. 

Twitter users immediately reacted to the clip, pointing to the looming AI takeover.

“Generative AI built on foundation models was applied to produce narration with varied sentence structure and vocabulary, avoiding redundant play-by-play iterations to make the clips informative and engaging,” IBM wrote in their press release for the partnership. 

With robot announcers, upbeat promotional content, and a brand new hospitality center, Augusta National is clearly continuing to push the boundaries in creative ways.