AI is playing a bigger role at the 2026 Olympics
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This year's Winter Olympics are doubling as a proving ground for how artificial intelligence can help athletes train, organizers shuffle events, and fans experience a centuries-old celebration of what humans can physically do.
Why it matters: The same technology reshaping the world is also transforming an event that brings the world together.
AI's most important role is also its least glamorous: logistics.
- Pulling off two weeks of precisely timed, globally broadcast competition requires orchestrating tens of thousands of athletes, staff and spectators — all at the mercy of winter weather.
- That's exactly the kind of rapid contingency planning that AI excels at: running simulations, weighing options and helping officials adjust quickly without derailing the broader program.
Where else AI is showing up:
- Broadcasting: The tech is bringing more data to the coverage and automating the process of producing highlights so fans can see just the clip they want. What used to be an entirely manual process has been greatly accelerated by AI, giving viewers on-demand access to nearly any individual performance.
- Judging: In sports decided by fractions of a point, AI-assisted video analysis can help officials review rotations, landings and form with greater precision. In figure skating, for example, computer vision could soon tell judges whether the blades of a figure skater actually completed the required rotations.
- Live translation: AI is easing language barriers among athletes and fans converging from around the world. Samsung is lending volunteers phones with on-device AI translation that works even in mountain areas with spotty cell service, helping bridge language gaps so volunteers can answer questions regardless of whether they speak the language.
- Data crunching: The Olympics generate massive amounts of performance and operational data — an area where LLMs shine. Omega, the official timekeeper, is using an internally developed LLM that lets its staff ask questions of the data (and then receive answers to queries), something that could be rolled out to broadcasters in the future. Another partner, Alibaba Cloud, is using its homegrown Qwen model to help National Olympic Committees search and sort documents across languages.
Flashback: AI's footprint has expanded even from the Paris Summer Games in 2024, where it largely played a supporting role, including early chatbot experiments for athletes.
Between the lines: The most visible shift is in how events are explained, not just shown. While drones are providing new angles to live coverage, AI is allowing for people to better understand the action.
- Networks are leaning into AI‑driven replays and contextual data to demystify unfamiliar sports. That's important because more than half of Olympic TV viewers aren't hardcore sports fans, says Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services.
The result is even casual viewers can "understand the sport and, most importantly, fall in love with it," Exarchos says
- "We should push the boundaries — but it should be used when it is meaningful," Exarchos told reporters during the Games' first full week. "It's not about showing off technology — it's about the athletes."
What's next: By the time the games arrive in Los Angeles in 2028, AI's role is expected to be far more ambitious.
- Organizers are already eyeing one massive task: using AI to help design a transit-first Olympics in a sprawling, car-centric metropolis.
- Getting from one place to another could prove to be as tough as sticking the landing on a gymnastics routine.
