The Seattle Seahawks today extended the team’s partnership with Amazon Web Services Inc. to continue employing its cloud, machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies.

Since 2019, AWS has been the team’s official cloud provider and key technology partner for football and business operations. As part of the renewed agreement, the Seahawks will use AWS generative AI services, specifically Amazon Bedrock, to improve their digital media processes.

Amazon Bedrock will help the team automate tasks like creating, translating and sharing press conference content in multiple languages across its website, social media and mobile apps. The Seahawks will be able to distribute content faster while reaching more fans across multiple platforms.

I recently talked about the partnership with Kenton Olson, vice president of digital and emerging media with the Seattle Seahawks. “AWS has become our toolbox to get things done — everything from how we stream a live video to transcribing to using generative AI to provide summaries,” he explained. “The latest initiative helps us get content out to our fans much faster than we could by processing things without AI.”

In the past, the Seahawks’ digital media team had to transcribe, summarize and share press conferences manually across different platforms, a time-consuming process that delayed content delivery. The Seahawks produce more than 1,000 videos annually, including more than 300 press conferences. Each video used to take about 30 minutes to complete, which caused delays, especially on busy game days.

“The process involved multiple groups, as editors had to hand things off to content teams to distribute,” Olson said. “Then, the videos had to go through quality assurance to ensure the right boxes were checked. It was a very repetitive, monotonous process. Heading into this season, let’s improve the efficiency so our creative team can spend more time creating and less time on the mundane. With AWS, we can automate almost the entire process.”

Bedrock has reduced the old 60-step manual process to just a few automated tasks, allowing the Seahawks to get content out to fans faster. Generative AI also creates detailed summaries of press conferences and adds time codes so fans can jump to specific parts of a video. As a result, the team can now distribute updates almost immediately after a press conference, improving both speed and accessibility.

I asked Kenton about the benefits, and he described many: “One of the biggest is that it can process the video faster than people. It also provides a richer and more detailed description. In the past, these were a sentence or two, but now they can be more colorful with time stamps so fans can jump to the parts they want to see. Our team can focus on more exciting things and be impactful for our fans.”

The Seahawks faced some challenges when implementing generative AI, which required training to recognize specific player and coach names. This required building a custom vocabulary that updates with the team’s roster. Another issue was hallucinations, where the AI would sometimes generate incorrect information, especially during long press conferences. To fix this, the team provided the AI with up-to-date lists of players, their roles and other details.

Overall, integrating the AI with various AWS tools created a smooth process for handling and distributing content. The Seahawks use a combination of AWS tools, including MediaConvert for processing videos, S3 for storing data, SMS for sending notifications, and Bedrock for AI tasks.

Although the current focus is on press conferences, the Seahawks plan to include other types of content so it’s more engaging for fans. The team hopes to unlock the entire media library by making old content available. With the team’s 50th season coming up, it’s a way to showcase historical footage that was previously difficult to access.

Looking ahead, I inquired what fans can expect to see over time concerning AI and how it changes the fan experience. Olson focused on two areas.

“The first is the ability to get more information faster,” he said. “If you think of what AWS Next Gen Stats has done, it wasn’t long ago when no one knew how fast the players were and how our social team could quickly post that a certain player broke 20 miles an hour, giving the fan more context. The second area is uncovering the game’s history to bubble up more content and tell unique and compelling stories. But ultimately, we want to continue getting fans more information faster than ever.”

It’s fair to say that AI promises to change the world in more ways than we can imagine. In the highly competitive world of sports and entertainment, AI is being used to redefine the lens that fans watch through. As a fan of the game, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

Photo: Wikimedia