Wimbledon.com
IBM’s AI-powered “Catch Me Up” feature,
new this year at Wimbledon, has drawn attention for factual errors published in player cards early in the tournament, which began this week.
Yesterday morning,
an X user pointed to inaccuracies in the player cards for Emma Raducanu and Daria Kasatkina; Raducanu was inaccurately described as “the British No. 1” in her bio (she entered the tournament the country’s third-ranked women’s singles player), and a matchup between Kasatkina, 27, and Shaui Zhang, 35, as an “eagerly anticipated encounter between two up-and-comers,” despite their ages.
Raducanu’s card was edited, the X user said. But other inconsistencies persisted this morning. 2024 match win totals listed for Iga Swiatek (43), Jelena Ostapenko (25) and Anna Kalinskaya (20) did not match each player’s totals listed on the WTA’s website and ESPN (45, 24 and 25, respectively). Ons Jabeur’s 14 2024 wins logged by the WTA and ESPN were reflected in her match card.
IBM and the All England Lawn Tennis Club
said in mid-June that the Catch Me Up feature was built using IBM’s Granite large-language model and watsonx AI platform and trained on match data and Wimbledon’s editorial style. An IBM spokesperson at the time said that the watsonx system contains controls to automatically flag irrelevant or inaccurate content, which would then be reviewed by AELTC and IBM editorial teams.
An All England Club spokesperson said: “The ‘Catch Me Up’ feature is a first-of-its-kind pilot within sport, delivered in partnership with IBM. This AI innovation will naturally continue to evolve as the system’s capability builds, with the assistance of human checks.
“This feature complements the traditional breadth of rich editorial content created by our team of writers who provide in-depth coverage of The Championships for audiences around the world.”
