Artificial intelligence has evolved from background technology to essential Olympic infrastructure. At Milano Cortina 2026, AI systems reconstruct ski jumps in 15 seconds, track figure skaters with 8K precision, manage snowmaking on warming Alpine slopes, and answer fan questions through the first “Olympic GPT.”
Right now, across the snow-covered peaks and urban venues of northern Italy, the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics is unfolding as the most AI-integrated sporting event in history. From real-time 360-degree replays that reconstruct ski jumps in 15 seconds to the first-ever Olympic GPT answering fan questions in multiple languages, artificial intelligence has moved from the background to center stage.
But this technological transformation began earlier. When the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics concluded, around 5 billion people had tuned in to watch the world’s greatest athletes compete. Behind the scenes, another force was quietly reshaping the Games in ways that few spectators noticed: artificial intelligence.
From AthleteGPT, a chatbot that assisted more than 11,000 athletes in navigating the Olympic Village, to AI systems that generated over 100,000 highlight clips from 11,000 hours of footage, Paris 2024 marked the first full-scale implementation of the International Olympic Committee’s ambitious vision for AI in sport. And now, Milano Cortina 2026 is taking that vision even further.
“Our continued success depends on how we embrace the ever-accelerating development of digital technology, and in particular Artificial Intelligence,” said IOC President Thomas Bach in launching the Olympic AI Agenda last April. “This makes our Olympic Agenda 2020 imperative ‘change or be changed’ even more urgent.”
Milano Cortina 2026: AI Takes the Alpine Stage
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, officially the XXV Winter Olympic Games, opened on February 6, 2026, and is now providing a real-time demonstration of how AI is reshaping winter sports competition. Spread across 15 venues in northern Italy, from the urban landscapes of Milan to the dramatic peaks of the Dolomites, these Games represent what organizers are calling the transition from “Cloud Olympics” toward “Intelligent Olympics.”
“With the power of AI, we are moving from ‘Cloud Olympics’ toward ‘Intelligent Olympics’, as AI helps us work better, make smarter decisions, and connect more meaningfully,” said Kirsty Coventry, President of the International Olympic Committee, at the opening of Alibaba’s Wonder on Ice showcase in Milan’s Piazza del Castello.
The First Olympic GPT
For the first time in Olympic history, Milano Cortina 2026 has introduced a large language model system powered by Alibaba’s Qwen models. The initiative, known as “Olympic AI Assistants,” provides multilingual conversational support and real-time event information, allowing fans to access official Olympic Games content through a chat-based interface.
This marks the first use of LLM technology at the Olympics, reflecting what industry observers describe as an “Olympic GPT” that delivers verified, real-time results, rules, and explanations. The emphasis, according to IOC-linked communications, has been on accuracy and reliability rather than open-ended generative experimentation.
AI-Powered Replays Redefine Winter Sports Coverage
The most visually striking AI application at Milano Cortina 2026 is Alibaba Cloud’s upgraded Real-Time 360° Replay system. The technology uses AI algorithms to separate athletes from complex backgrounds such as snow and ice, enabling three-dimensional reconstructions of key moments in 15 to 20 seconds, fast enough for live broadcast use.
“For Milano Cortina 2026, we are applying cloud and AI capabilities to make broadcasts more dynamic, workflows more efficient, and Olympic moments more accessible to audiences around the world,” said Dr. Feifei Li, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group.
The system is being deployed across 17 sports and disciplines, including ice hockey, freestyle skiing, figure skating, and ski jumping. In addition to the BulletTime effects first introduced at Beijing 2022, the platform now features a new “Spacetime Slices” capability that creates composite images showing multiple phases of an athlete’s movement.
Figure Skating Gets the 8K AI Treatment
Figure skating, the Winter Olympics’ biggest TV draw, has received a substantial technological upgrade. Fourteen 8K resolution cameras positioned around the rink capture every skater’s movement, while AI processes the data to track trajectory, position, and movement across all three axes.
“We use proprietary software to interpret the images and visualize athlete movement in a 3D model,” says Alain Zobrist, CEO of Swiss Timing. “AI processes the data so we can track trajectory, position, and movement across all three axes, X, Y, and Z.”
The system measures jump heights, air times, and landing speeds in real time, producing heat maps and graphic overlays that break down each program. “The time it takes for us to measure the data, until we show a matrix on TV with a graphic, this whole chain needs to take less than 1/10 of a second,” Zobrist explains.
AI Meets Unpredictable Alpine Weather
Perhaps nowhere is AI’s practical value more evident than in managing Milano Cortina’s most persistent challenge: unpredictable weather. Climate Central reports that February temperatures in Cortina d’Ampezzo have warmed 6.4°F (3.6°C) since the town first hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956, with long-range forecasts predicting a 50 to 60 percent chance of above-average temperatures.
To compensate, organizers are relying on advanced snowmaking infrastructure that combines weather forecasts, sensors, and GPS-based monitoring to manage snow production and placement. The goal is not simply quantity but course consistency, surface hardness, and safety. As Move the Needle reports, “Snow preparation has become a form of environmental engineering, where digital measurement and control systems shape how athletes experience the course.”
The unpredictable conditions have already affected competition. Women’s downhill training sessions in Cortina were delayed or rescheduled due to persistent snowfall, while automated systems work continuously to maintain optimal conditions across venues spread throughout the Italian Alps.
The Largest Digital Content Operation in Olympic History
Milano Cortina 2026 is producing more than 5,000 short-form digital assets, including behind-the-scenes footage, highlights, and emotional reactions, distributed through OBS Content+, a cloud-based platform powered by Alibaba Cloud. The platform’s advanced discovery tool allows teams worldwide to locate, edit, and publish content efficiently, regardless of location.
The Games’ website has introduced AI-powered highlights and article summaries, which give fans a quick, clear overview of key Olympic stories and help them decide what to watch or read next.
Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services, emphasized in a media briefing last week that “what we’ve got now is a new generation of technology that really allows for a safe use of drones that go very close to the action. You will be seeing images that we have not seen before in how these sports are covered.”
AI as Infrastructure, Not Spectacle
Unlike earlier Olympic editions associated with single technological breakthroughs, Milano Cortina 2026 reflects what observers call a more sober phase of technological evolution. “The emphasis is not on spectacle or novelty, but on integration, resilience, and operational control,” notes industry analysis. “Artificial intelligence, cloud-based broadcasting, precision timekeeping, climate-adaptive snowmaking, and security systems are no longer optional enhancements. They are fundamental to whether the Games run at all.”
With dozens of events running simultaneously across venues separated by mountain ranges, AI helps manage scale. The technology flags key moments, attaches metadata to live video, and surfaces results and athlete information more quickly. For winter sports, where decisive actions can be brief and easily missed, this kind of automation has become essential.
Cloud-based broadcasting continues to expand, with OBS Live Cloud supporting 39 broadcasters, delivering 428 live video feeds, including 26 ultra-high-definition streams, along with 72 audio feeds. By replacing traditional satellite links and dedicated transmission lines, cloud-based delivery reduces cost, setup time, and technical complexity while improving flexibility and resilience.
Finding the Next Michael Phelps in Senegal
Perhaps the most revolutionary application of AI at the Olympics is its potential to democratize athletic opportunity. In Senegal, more than 1,000 young people participated in Intel’s AI-powered talent identification system, a custom-built technology that analyzes body measurements, reaction times, and physical capabilities to determine which of 12 sports a participant is best suited for. The results were striking: 48 high performers were identified and included in a program run by the Senegalese National Olympic Committee.
“There might be a dozen Michael Phelps running around in different parts of the world, but we will never know this because they’ve never had the opportunity to compete, and we have no way of identifying that these people can be elite,” Amit Joshi, Professor and AI Expert at IMD Business School and member of the AI Working Group, told The National.
Sarah Vickers, Head of Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic Office, explained the technology’s promise: “You can reach areas at a very low cost and figure out how to find athletes in all corners of the world and for all sports.”
At the Stade de France during the Paris Games, a scaled-down version of this system allowed spectators to test which sport their bodies were best suited to, entering a dark box where cameras measured their bodies before putting them through running, squeezing, and reaction tests.
Training the Perfect Dive
Beyond talent identification, AI is fundamentally changing how elite athletes prepare for competition. The Chinese Olympic Diving team deployed AI systems to capture intricate details of diving movements that traditional video recordings miss. Lu Feixiang, one of the developers of the AI training system at Baidu, noted that the technology can provide real-time analysis of movements invisible to the human eye.
For Team USA, Google Cloud is now analyzing training data and sports performance to produce insights for athlete preparation ahead of both the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games and the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games. The cloud platform examines biomechanical data that coaches can use to optimize training regimens and reduce injury risk.
Omega, the official timekeeper of the Games, has integrated AI into its performance analysis systems. Alain Zobrist, CEO of Omega Timing, explained that the company uses cameras and sensors to track swimmers’ movements, then employs computer vision and AI to understand acceleration, deceleration, number of strokes, and time in the water. In tennis, similar computer vision technology helps understand athletes’ reaction time to serves and how this correlates with the quality of their returns.
Leveling the Playing Field for Obscure Sports
For decades, sports like table tennis, speed climbing, and equestrian have struggled to gain the same broadcast attention as marquee events like gymnastics or swimming. AI is changing that calculus.
Intel’s Automatic Highlights Generation system, trained on Olympic archive videos, can capture key sporting moments across all sports, providing broadcasters with ready-to-use content that previously would have been too time-consuming to produce for lesser-known events.
Rick Hargaden, who oversees Intel’s Olympic initiatives, told Fortune that the technology “mainly relies on the noise of crowds to highlight key moments, for example a shot on goal in football or the closing stages of swimming races.”
“One of the objectives that we had with the IOC was that we’d have accessibility to perhaps some of the lesser in popularity sports, which maybe didn’t get as much time as what we might consider to be the key event,” Hargaden explained. “We don’t know whether it means that that sport gains more popularity or has increased viewership. We’ll have to see over time, but that was part of the intent.”
At Paris 2024, OBS produced 11,000 hours of content, which AI sliced into more than 100,000 separate highlight clips in addition to full coverage of each event. Viewers could focus on particular athletes in specific sports, while broadcasters could create clips in different formats, such as horizontal video for social media.
Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services, emphasized the human element remains paramount: “What I keep on insisting and reminding ourselves, starting with myself, is that this is not about technology. It’s about using technology to tell the stories of the greatest athletes in the world.”
The Al Michaels Clone
Perhaps no AI application garnered more attention than NBC’s AI-generated clone of legendary sports broadcaster Al Michaels. The network introduced “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock,” featuring narration from an AI recreation of Michaels’ voice, trained on his previous NBC appearances to replicate his distinct delivery style.
“When I was approached about this, I was sceptical but obviously curious,” Michaels said. “Then, I saw a demonstration detailing what they had in mind. I said, ‘I’m in.'”
The tool allowed NBC to create personalized 10-minute highlight playlists tailored to each user’s sporting preferences, a feat that would be impossible with human narrators given the scale and diversity of Olympic coverage.
Molly Soloman, Executive Producer of NBC’s Olympics & Paralympics Production, explained: “AI can enrich our presentation through data analysis, with graphics and enhanced video, personalization and predictive analysis.”
Protecting Athletes from Online Hate
While much of the AI deployment at the Olympics focuses on performance and broadcasting, one of the most important applications addresses a growing problem: online harassment of athletes.
Sarah Walker, Olympic silver medallist in BMX and IOC member, told The National that athletes, especially women, face significant backlash if their performance doesn’t meet expectations. “Popular athletes, especially, face significant backlash if their performance on a given day doesn’t meet expectations,” Walker said.
At Paris 2024, AI technology monitored every athlete’s social media for hate comments, promptly removing them before athletes could see them. The system represents a crucial intervention in protecting mental health during high-pressure competition.
The Olympic AI Agenda
The IOC’s comprehensive approach to AI is outlined in the Olympic AI Agenda, developed in collaboration with an AI Working Group composed of AI pioneers, academics, athletes, and representatives of technology companies. The document identifies five focus areas: supporting athletes, clean competition, and safe sport; ensuring equal access to AI benefits; optimizing Olympic operations with a focus on sustainability; growing engagement with people; and driving efficiency across IOC management.
“It is human beings who are at the heart of the Olympic AI Agenda,” Bach emphasized. “In other words: athletes. Because athletes are at the heart of the Olympic Movement. Unlike other sectors, the sports sector is not faced with the existential question of whether AI will replace humans. In sport, it will always be up to the athlete to perform.”
The agenda also addresses concerns about equity. “We will live up to our commitment to equality through solidarity by making the benefits of AI accessible to everyone in the Olympic Movement,” Bach stated. “Not just for a privileged few, but for everyone in our Olympic community.”
Sustainability Through Intelligence
One often-overlooked application of AI at the Olympics involves sustainability. For Paris 2024, the IOC pledged to halve the carbon footprint compared to previous Games. To achieve this, they deployed Alibaba Cloud’s Energy Expert platform, an AI-driven sustainability solution that monitored and managed electricity consumption across 35 venues around Paris.
The platform tracked energy-related data in real time, including energy consumption, power demand contingency, venue capacity, competition-related information, and weather conditions, creating venue-specific energy-use forecasts and recommendations.
Ilario Corna, the IOC’s chief technology and information officer, expects that the data-driven insights produced by Energy Expert will help organizers learn from each Games edition and apply that knowledge to make future events even more energy-efficient.
The Ethical Questions
Not everyone embraces the AI revolution without reservation. Getty Images, which produces millions of photos during the Games, has invested in underwater robots and private 5G networks but remains cautious about AI’s role in editorial operations.
“We’re always looking to see how we can do it ethically,” said Michael Heiman, Getty’s VP of global sport.
Jesse Davis, a KU Leuven computer science professor who participated in the AI Working Group, noted some risks are outside the IOC’s control. Health data is collected by national federations or sport governing bodies; third-party applications have their own practices. There are also risks unique to sport itself. The analysis of basketball and baseball performance has fundamentally changed those industries, which can create a more homogeneous style of play and potentially turn off fans.
Ilario Corna acknowledged the challenge of ensuring new technologies don’t unduly benefit the richest countries. “It is important that we give access to all,” he told Axios. Already, the Olympics has provided AI training to national committees and international sport governing bodies from around the world. “The jury is still out, but I think that we are upholding these values.”
Christopher Schell, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Intel Corporation, offered an optimistic vision: “The impact of AI everywhere will be transformative. Adoption of AI is going to make sport more inclusive, competitive, safer and fairer. As a sports fan, this is incredibly exciting.”
As the Olympic Movement enters this new era, with Milano Cortina 2026 now demonstrating AI’s transformative power in real-time across the Italian Alps, one thing is clear: artificial intelligence is no longer a supporting player. It is fundamentally reshaping how athletes train, how competitions are judged, how fans experience the Games, and perhaps most importantly, who gets the opportunity to compete on the world’s greatest sporting stage.
LA 2028 and Beyond
While Milano Cortina 2026 demonstrates AI’s current capabilities in real-time, the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics promises an even more ambitious vision. Google has signed on as a founding partner and official cloud provider, bringing its Gemini large language model, Google Cloud infrastructure, and search technologies to facilitate operations including athlete training analysis, fan information retrieval, and workforce management for 70,000 volunteers and staff members.
“With tools like Gemini and new Google Search features like AI Mode, it’s easier than ever for people to find the information they’re looking for, no matter how simple or complex,” said Marvin Chow, Vice President of Marketing at Google.
The LA Games will manage more than three dozen sports taking place across a broad swath of Southern California, plus softball and canoeing in Oklahoma City. “For me, it is, ‘How can we actually use AI to help the operations of the games globally?'” Corna told Axios.
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