📰 Newspapers

Could AI help decide medals at LA28 Olympics?

Could AI help decide medals at LA28 Olympics?

AI-assisted judging was used at the World Gymnastics Championships and could help decide medals at the summer Olympics.

Gymnastics is leading the way in applying artificial intelligence to the judging of elite sport, and it could be used to help decide medals at the LA Olympics.

Bosses in the sport said they would be "highly surprised" if AI-assisted judging was not implemented at the Games in 2028.

This is despite some leading gymnasts criticising its use at the recent World Championships, saying they were "not robots" and warning it could be "dangerous".

Olympic champion Carlos Yulo and British gymnast Harry Hepworth had the difficulty rating of their vaults downgraded in qualifying.

Both were performing the piked Dragulescu and had their scores reduced from a 5.6 to a 5.2.

They attempted the same vault in the final with Hepworth finishing sixth, while Yulo fell and came seventh.

On his return from Rotterdam, Hepworth told BBC Sport: "On the half twist I bend my legs so that I can prepare for the landing, which I think is the most sensible thing to do because you don't want to break your legs or anything.

"But the AI detection system caught on to it and said I was doing a tuck position, which then downgrades the vault by four tenths.

"It definitely cost me a few positions, I think, in the final for sure."

In brief

Gymnastics is leading the way in applying artificial intelligence to the judging of elite sport, and it could be used to help decide medals at the LA Olympics. Olympic champion Carlos Yulo and British gymnast Harry Hepworth had the difficulty rating of their vaults downgraded in qualifying. They attempted the same vault in the final with Hepworth finishing sixth, while Yulo fell and came seventh.

This is the opening of the story, shared with credit to BBC Sport. The rest of the report — with every detail — continues on the publisher’s website.

Continue reading at BBC Sport ↗

Cookie settings

Choose which cookies we may use. You can change this at any time from Cookie settings in the footer. Details of each cookie are in the Cookie Policy.

Strictly necessary

Needed for sign-in, security, payments and remembering these choices. Always on.

Preferences

Remember settings such as dark mode.

Analytics & performance

Help us count visits, understand which pages, devices and countries our readers use, and measure how well the site performs – anonymous and aggregated.

Advertising & marketing

Lets advertising partners show and personalise adverts, measure impressions, clicks and visits, prevent ad fraud and pay us – this is how the free site is funded.

🔔 News notifications

Get headlines from NewsHub on this device — even when the site is closed.

You can switch this off at any time. Works on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux browsers; on iPhone/iPad add the site to your Home Screen first.