AI at the Paris 2024 Olympics: What Does This Mean for Athletes and Spectators?

by Caroline Cassino | 29 May, 2024 | Uncategorized

Even the Olympics cannot escape the promise of AI. Just months away from the Paris 2024 Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has unveiled its strategy for integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into sports. The IOC has outlined the impact AI can have on sports and how the organization intends to lead the global implementation of AI in sports.

The IOC explained the use of AI at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, serving 4 objectives

On April 19th, the IOC revealed its AI strategy to leverage this rapidly evolving technology. Here are the 4 objectives that AI will serve:

Find and screen talented athletes
Help competitors build custom training routines
Judge and referee some matches
Create individualized experiences for viewers

How does it work?

Two examples were unveiled during this announcement.

In one example, AI tracked an athlete as they dived into the water, providing real-time information on the number of rotations they executed as well as their maximum height. This technology could assist judges in providing more precise and impartial feedback, and help athletes understand why they received a particular score.

In another example, a robot was trained to play table tennis in the style of double Olympic champion Xu Xin. It then used the model to play against itself in training sessions.

The use of AI at the Paris 2024 Olympics has already sparked controversies

Civil liberties groups fear abuses regarding the use of AI-powered cameras to detect security threats (such as identifying abandoned packages or crowd movements) at the Paris Olympics this summer.

English triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee, although enthusiastic about the promise of AI, expressed concern that some Olympic jobs might be replaced. "Using AI to assist in judging will make things fairer," he said, "but how do we ensure that AI aids judges rather than replacing them?"

AI is impacting all industries and raising recurring concerns

AIs are profoundly transforming all industries, including sports. Their ability to process large amounts of data, identify patterns, and learn autonomously is redefining productivity and innovation standards. AIs pave the way for a future where innovation is ubiquitous, offering growth and transformation opportunities to all industries.

However, the widespread adoption of artificial intelligences also raises recurring concerns regarding privacy protection and data security, which can influence consumer trust in brands using these technologies, and the potential marginalization of workers whose jobs are automated.

In this context, the recurring concerns of internet users and associations defending their rights must be integrated into the reflection on the integration of any AI into a business. On the other hand, careful monitoring and vigilance are essential to accompany new announcements made by brands or companies in order to react proportionately and at the right time.

Top 11 ways to understand your audience with search data

by Emmanuelle Chartier | 29 May, 2024 | Uncategorized

Harvesting insights from digital silence

Have you ever wondered what people do on internet when they don’t talk? Meaning, when they don’t post or comment. Consider yourself for a minute, maybe you are part of the audience who does not feel like sharing opinions online. Besides, you might not even be tempted to like a post. Does it mean you are absent from internet? Not at all ! You are simply part of a silent audience. However, you still have an internet presence leaving your own footprint on the web. After all, even the most vocal of us, also have a silent footprint, and this footprint can be highly insightful. This article shows you how to understand your audience with search data.

Drop the Data Exhaustivity rush...

Since the arrival of social media, the conception of market research has widely evolved. So much so, that social listening and particularly social network listening have become a must to build global marketing, communication and even product development strategies.

Brands want to know, first and foremost, what people talk about? Indeed, the Holy Grail of this quest for online conversations was always exhaustivity. Getting everything, every single comment, article, and post. If this was never possible for technical reasons, 10 years ago, as social listening was starting to take off, we were certainly closer to exhaustivity than we are now.
Old Millennials will remember a time when the social media landscape was rather simple with Twitter, Facebook and the new kid on the block Instagram. And for a few years we were able to get a lot, until the arrival of RGPD and the new limitations imposed by the platform restricting the access to data. Add to the mix platform evolving fast, some becoming less certain, less stable and the heavy rise of video format and ephemeral content (reels, shorts, stories, etc.). Capturing conversations had been made harder and more expensive for brands, pushing them further from the exhaustivity dream.

The former wide access we had to conversations with a stable and concise online landscape made us forget that not everyone talks, and even more importantly not everyone talks all the time.

... Rather look for Data Accuracy

Beyond the conversations we may or may not have, we all leave a silent footprint. This footprint can be tracked and analyzed to garner insights.
Knowledge and insights were never dependent on exhaustivity. It was never about how many posts you get but rather what type of information you get. Weak signals for instance have proven their importance.

At Digital Insighters, we firmly believe in our holistic approach to insights, which we have been applying for our clients for several years. We integrate various types of data to achieve a more detailed view and a better understanding of the audiences we analyze.

Learn to find and read your audience digital footprint.

Search social listening digital insighter insight

So, what do we look at?

We look at views, engagement, behaviors, and search.
It is not because you don’t talk that you don’t see, like, follow, search for, or read.

Also, note that all industries combined, we see volume of conversations globally decrease in favor of engagement. People might be less vocal but not less active or involved with the content they care about.

There for, there is something to learn in the fact that:

A topic might not generate strong volume but high engagement.
A post/pictures garners engagement.
An audience has certain interests (who they follow, what type of they channel they watch or radio/podcast they listen to, etc.)
Users might reveal informations in their bios.
A topic generates multiple threads of conversation on reddit and in the number of visits these threads gets.
A topic is searched on google, amazon or Bing.

There is a bit of a science and a technic to read, cross and interpret this data. Digital Insighters developed its own methodology in studying consumers silent footprint and crossing it with their conversations.

The power of search data, Top 11 insights to leverage.

This data notably search data cross referenced with conversations has enabled us to enrich our analysis and understand specific problematics our clients were facing.
We were able to advise them on various porblematics.

Here are our top 11 ways to leverage search data :

Real time feedback into what consumers are actively searching for, thus providing a dynamic view of current interests.
Pain points consumers were having regarding a service, a leisure or a product for instance. Concerns, uncertainty, and fear about a products, a posology, etc.
Knowledge gap, in existing content or information, revealing areas where users are seeking answers or solutions that are currently underserved.
R&D inspiration / consumers’ whishes & expectations, if we find consumers are looking for a product a brand is not yet offering.
Intent, analyzing items searched to helpe get a deeper knowledge on possible purchase intent.
Main entry point when looking for your brand products (boutique, online reseller, v+towns, price, etc.)
Owned content strategy advise.
Paid content & targeting strategy advise.
SEO strategy enhancement, by identifying high-volume keywords, assessing competition, and understanding user search behavior.
Campaign tracking enhancement, by looking during the campaign period is products searches are boosted.
Predictive Analytics, forecasting future trends, user behavior, or market dynamics based on historical search patterns.

Digital Insighters Conviction.

Looking at the silent footprint is one of the aspects of the holistic approach to insights. With some of our clients we can also go further by crossing other types of data such as field data from traffic, sales, market research, etc.

Our conviction is that conversations are only the tip of the iceberg and with new tools and technology we have now access to what was before invisible knowledge.
With these accesses we should no longer have a compartmentalized view of the data, building reports around data set, but we should have an approach and organization based on your questions and problematics as a brand.

Naturally, the brief was always the starting point, but it did not inform the structure of the study, data set did.

Our approach allows us to tell you the story of your consumers, not just the story of connecting data sets. And this story can only be complete if we consider the silent footprint of your consumers.

Finally, to reference a quote by JRR Tolkien : “All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost”, you could say that “All who speak does not rule, Not all those who are silent are absent”.

The Allied Console Forces VS Activision-Blizzard

by Nichita Pohila | 1 Dec, 2021 | Uncategorized

The Activision-Blizzard controversy took an unexpected turn this November with three of its biggest partners turning their backs on the company. The public’s reaction was mostly positive but a cloud of doubt about the concrete ramifications of these events shrouds the gaming scene.

Activision-Blizzard has been under intense scrutiny since Summer 2021

On July 20, 2021, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing files a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard alleging discrimination and sexual harassment against women in the workplace. The company denied allegations calling them “distorted and untrue” and company CEO, Bobby Kotick declared being unaware of the issues. Since then, allegedly big changes were made within the company with high-ranking employees being fired for misconduct, department leaders leaving their jobs, and internal committees being formed to try to bring lasting change to the company’s culture.

This brings us to November 2021 and the publication of the Wall Street Journal article revealing more details about harassment, discrimination, and intimidation within the company. It included information about CEO Bobby Kotick being aware of all the issues regarding sexual misconduct, personally intervening in a sexual harassment investigation within the company, and making death threats to his assistant.

An unusual turn of events

The reaction of the public to these revelations was exactly how you would expect it to be: bad. But then, the most interesting turn of events happened. The 3 CEOs of the 3 largest gaming companies (and the 3 main console makers) came out to denounce the Activision's practices.

Here is a quick timeline:

16 November 2021: publication of the Wall Street Journal article
17 November 2021: Sony Interactive Entertainment’s President and CEO, Jim Ryan addressed an internal email to all PlayStation employees saying that he is “disheartened and frankly stunned” by the new revelations brought up. The email was immediately leaked to the public.
18 November 2021: Xbox’s Phil Spencer sent an email to his staff condemning Activision’s actions and saying that “This type of behavior has no place in our industry”. He went as far as saying that Xbox and Microsoft would make “ongoing proactive adjustments” to its relationship with Activision Blizzard. The email was soon leaked to the public.
23 November 2021: Doug Bowser, President of Nintendo of America found “these accounts distressing and disturbing.” He goes on to say that Nintendo staff have been “in contact with Activision” and have taken action (without specifying what it was).

Three major gaming companies turning their backs on one of their biggest partners

This is very unusual. There is no precedent for this sort of thing. Three major gaming companies Sony Entertainment, Xbox and Nintendo turning their backs on one of their biggest partners. The most surprising on this list is PlayStation as it has an exclusivity deal with Activision regarding the Call of Duty franchise (CoD players on PlayStation routinely get exclusive content that players on other platforms don’t have). They were the first ones to take a stand.

The Big Three decided to invest in their reputation by taking a public stance against the discriminatory practices of Activision Blizzard. There are sending out a message to their customers and the public in general.

Did the Big Three succeed in their PR stunt? Let’s take a look at the numbers

With an average of 12 000 mentions in the last 30 days, we can clearly see at which points in time the mentions skyrocketed.

The period from the 16th to the 20th was related to the release of the infamous article and PlayStation’s and Xbox’s CEO’s taking their stand on the issue.
The second spike, which is much higher than the first is associated with Doug Bowser’s internal email. As we can see already, Nintendo’s stance provoked a much larger number of reactions as it is really unusual for Nintendo to get involved in controversies like that.

Out of those 12 000, we took those originating from Twitter (~8 000 tweets) and broke down the unique authors into affinity groups that allowed us to better understand the communities behind the mentions. Here’s what we found:

Mapping of communities talking about Activision

Positive reactions with a speck of doubt

Reactions were mostly positive with people being pleasantly surprised by this turn of events with praise and hopes that this will make an actual difference within the gaming world. People were also surprised by how “firmly worded” was Spencer’s statement.

3 PDG des principaux constructeurs de consoles de jeux videos

Spencer - firmly worded about Activision

Although netizens were happy to discover that their favorite gaming brands were standing up to justice, many were wondering if actual actions would be taken like temporary removal of Activision’s games from their respective stores or a full-on boycott of their games. There were statements expressing that if nothing concrete follows the bold statements then a real opportunity for change within the gaming industry could be lost.

Many saw this as a way for the Big Three to cover their backs as they are fully aware that they themselves are guilty of the same discriminatory practices. Taking a stance would allow them to take the blow and address future issues of that kind retroactively. In an ironic twist of fate, this came out to be exactly the case. On November 23nd, exactly 6 days after Jim Ryan’s speech, PlayStation was hit with a gender discrimination lawsuit from one of its ex-workers.

Consumer impact is negligible (for now)

Did the Big Three’s stance on the issue influence players and content creators’ decisions about whether or not to buy or to make content on Activision’s games? It is hard to say.

Some netizens hoped that this would trigger a big reaction and that people would start dropping the company’s games just like some creators did in the Summer following the first set of revelations.

Content Creators after Activision revelations

Indeed, Blizzard’s flagship game, World of Warcraft has been experiencing a steady player base decline for months now but it is mostly linked to in-game problems and issues with the latest content additions. The controversy doesn’t help but is unlikely the main factor in the declining numbers.

Recent numbers also revealed that the latest Call of Duty sales have been unimpressive compared to its previous record-breaking iterations. An actual study done by GamesIndustry.biz has shed some light one why the latest CoD game hasn’t been so popular.

The main reasons are the abundance of games, too much Call of Duty, and a dislike for a World War II setting. The controversy only accounts for 6% of the overall reasons: a not so impressive number but which could potentially grow.

This goes in line with the community breakdown we presented earlier. There were no CoD centered communities that expressed themselves on the matter likely meaning that Call of Duty fans either don’t care or choose not to express their opinions on the matter.

The industry’s #MeToo moment

The gaming industry is experiencing its own #MeToo moment with more and more revelations of toxic company cultures and systematic gender discrimination with Activision-Blizzard being the latest in a long line of culprits.
What recent events showed, is that the gaming industry is starting to pay more attention to the reputation of its partners. At least so it seems. Time will tell if the Big Three will follow up their words with concrete actions and that will set a precedent for the rest of the industry.