In the midst of Super Bowl LX week in San Francisco, California, award-winning sports personality Kelsey Nicole Nelson sat down with 12-time Pro-Bowl and hall of famer, Roland “Champ” Bailey to discuss SportBrief AI Solutions.
SportBrief AI Solutions is a technology tool partnered with Google and created by HBCU students at Morgan State University that provides previews and post-game summaries from an AI avatar as a way to improve sports reporting. Google provided a $100,000 donation for Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication.
The technology captures a likeness of an individual to digitize talent in brand advertising from different audios or a video platform, doing all the work in a matter of minutes.
“I am always trying to figure out how to steal myself, the knowledge I have,” Bailey said … “It takes my image, and you insert data into the system and my likeness regurgitates that as a pregame.”
With the heavy involvement of Google and Westwood One, the former NFL star believes the companies contribute to elevating the AI platform.
Bailey’s involvement with the sports-based technology started with his friend and JR SportBrief show on CBS Radio, JR Jackson.
“I could trust that he’s doing right by his connections and my connections,” Bailey said. “It is easy for me to introduce this to other people and get them to understand what it does.”
Bailey went on to praise Jackson for using artificial intelligence in an ethical way using an individual’s likeness with permission and skill.
“If you want to get people involved in that way, you have to be purposeful about it,” Bailey said. “So, I got to give JR and Google a lot of credit for at least taking the step to go and get these kids involved because this could change their lives.”
Moreover, Bailey said that individuals in the journalism field are prone to view AI as harmful in the news industry.
“From a journalist’s perspective, you might get intimidated by this because you can see how somebody who’s a little more noticeable could steal their likeness,” Bailey said. “I think people who are journalists can leverage this to then scale their image and their likeness in ways that they never thought of.”
Pew Research Center found through a survey that 59% of Americans think AI minimizes journalism jobs.
Though AI is seen as a question mark in the journalism field, Bailey encourages individuals to take a look at the technology for benefits.
Bailey calls it important to him with the product being developed by college African-American students from HBCUs and the involvement of students convinced him to be part of the project.
“As a Black man, I understand the impact of having access to different tools before they even hit the market,” Bailey said.
With the work Jackson puts into this project, Bailey believes SportBrief AI is being used in a different way than ever before and transcends well with him seeing sports currently at its highest peak.
Listen to the complete interviews down below and check out the show on Spotify and YouTube.
