Google Cloud will descend upon the Aspen X-Games on January 23 to 25 (USA time) as new CEO, two time Winter Olympian Jeremy Bloom, gets progressive with tech.
The subjective nature of judged snow sports is a regular bone of contention where there is no clear winner across a finish line. Enter Google AI Judge, a tool utilising Vertex AI (same tech used by the English Football Federation) with input from snow sports athletes, analysts, judges, metrics, degree of difficulty parameters and more.
The AI tool can recognise tricks, name them and score them and is well versed on all judging criteria from hand drags that lose points to 1080s that gain them. Don’t despair the AI judge is just a trial this year as medals will still be decided by human judging. The future goal is to have four judges and an AI judge determining medals.
AI scoring will start with practice runs and a projection of how the athletes will perform in the finals. Then expect to witness AI in action at both the men’s and women’s snowboarding Superpipe finals with analysis of the run broadcast on screen.
*feature shot of Scotty James who is going for his seventh X Games gold in 2025. Photo: ESPN/X Games
