China’s AI National Team Made a Stunning Debut at Winter Olympics Beijing 2022
The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics Beijing 2022 held at the China’s national stadium (also known as Bird’s Nest), on February 4, 2022, which coincided with the traditional Chinese New Year holiday, attracted hundreds of millions of viewers and arose widespread discussion.
Zhang Yimou, the famous Chinese director who has previously directed the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games twice, described the opening ceremony of the evening with four words: “ethereal, romantic, modern and technological”. Unlike the Beijing Olympics, which showcased China’s 5,000-year civilization, the Winter Olympics went from “I” to “we”, from “talking about history” to “looking to the future”. China confidently expressed the new Olympic motto “Together” through “a snowflake”, and conveyed the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind to the world, which impressed netizens from all over the world with this Chinese romantic interpretation.
A Japanese netizen commented, “I thought the Winter Olympics would adopt huge-crowd strategy as before, but I didn’t expect it to be so pure and beautiful. It feels so good.” The “solar-term countdown” has been well received on the Internet. “It’s of high grade to start the Olympics with the 24 solar terms and the Chinese New Year”, “It is affective and exciting”, “I fully understood the charm of Asia”. Among them, Japan’s famous sharp-tongued director Takeshi Kitano was once again brought to the fore of the “Olympic topic” by the public. Unlike his spicy comments on the Tokyo Summer Olympics, he gave his full approval to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, saying that he envied Zhang Yimou, who is also a director, for having the opportunity to direct such an event and fully convey his country’s culture to the world.
The success of being widely known cannot be separated from the many “cool technologies” behind the scenes of the Winter Olympics. At the opening ceremony, the Bird’s Nest was upgraded intelligently in an all-around way and achieved transformation from “Water Cube” to “Ice Cube”, artificial intelligence, 5G signal coverage of the venue, and 8K real-time transmission of competition images, which all contributed to this wonderful World-class performance. The amazing “ice breaking” of Olympic five rings came from Chinese aerospace technology. According to the technical staff, the five rings are 19 meters long, 8.75 meters high, weighing 3 tons, but only 35 centimeters thick. It is like a “fragile” artwork, which requires a strict grasp of weight and precision in order to achieve the ultimate aesthetic presentation. For this reason, the technical team found inspiration in the aerospace rocket manufacturing technology and developed the “skeleton” – aluminum alloy truss structure, the “clothes” – LED display, and the “jacket”- diffusion plate, so that the strong and light five rings rose slowly in the world’s attention.
Surely, in addition to the above visible hardcore technology, the Winter Olympics are also full of invisible “Chinese technology”. Athletes from all over the world have encountered many interesting things after staying in the Olympic Village, and have been acting as Winter Olympics promoters on social media.
Russia’s TASS news agency reported under the headline From “Robot Chefs” to “Flying Noodles” that in the media restaurant of the main media center, a dozen robots are cooking independently in the kitchen, while food delivery is done by delivery robots along a suspended glass track. When the robots move above the desired table, a tray with food “falls from the sky” and the customer simply takes the food off the tray. Stalls of Chinese, Asian, world, pizza and pasta, as well as “specialties” satisfy the appetites of all nations, and snacks are available throughout the day to provide athletes with sufficient food reserves.
Food is the first hurdle to win the favor of the athletes and staffs of various countries and what makes them feel more affectionate is that this Winter Olympics has achieved barrier-free communication, a core technology that breaks the language barrier and makes the world more united as one. This mysterious power comes from a local Chinese artificial intelligence company – iFLYTEK. As the supplier of automatic voice conversion and translation for this Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics, iFLYTEK can provide speech synthesis in 60 languages, speech recognition in 69 languages, machine translation in 168 languages and interactive understanding in 3 languages.
To achieve barrier-free communication between people and people, people and events, and people and organizations, iFLYTEK’s cool technologies are lurking in all corners of the Winter Olympics. The Shougang Park intelligent service robot platform integrates rich AI management and data closure functions, covering the AI core interaction capabilities required by intelligent service robots in each scenario, such as knowledge graph construction tools and multimodal interaction. “It can provide multi-dimensional and all-weather intelligent services for participating athletes, tourists and office workers in language translation, navigation, hotel check-in, event inquiries, travel and tourism through voice recognition, machine translation, image recognition and other AI technologies to meet the demand for international event services for the Winter Olympics,” the relevant person in charge of iFLYTEK told reporters.
In the Beijing Winter Olympic Village, there is also a volunteer named “Ai+” who is ready to provide consultation services. Unlike other Winter Olympics volunteers, “Ai+” is an AI avatar created by iFLYTEK and is fluent in six languages: Chinese, English, Japanese, Russian, French and Spanish. She has real-life facial expressions and body language, and can interact with people in real time. As a Winter Olympics know-it-all, “Ai+” can answer questions about Winter Olympics events, schedule inquiries, and knowledge of ice and snow sports. Our reporter interacted with her in depth as a “tourist”. In addition to the interesting explanation of the Winter Olympics, “Ai+” enthusiastically introduced the nearby food and attractions, impressing people with her polite and warm service.
The Winter Olympic Village also has a mysterious group of effective “interpretation” tools, which is iflyrec intelligent meeting system featuring translation, transcription, and recording. Whole-process online communication played a major role in the prevention of pandemic. The Czech athlete Natalie said on her social media platform when she shared her daily routine that she doesn’t have to worry about communication here as the machine is no longer a cold tool, but full of human warmth, allowing everyone to socialize freely and make a lot of new friends.
In addition, in the daily office of the Olympic Organizing Committee, the Iflyrec Transcription System has been stationed in nearly 50 offices of various departments, such as the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Volunteers, and the Ministry of Services, and has so far provided more than 1,000 sessions of barrier-free communication services.
It is reported that the voice conversion and translation technology of iFLYTEK is not only at the forefront in China, but also at the leading level in the world. After this wonderful demonstration at the Winter Olympics, iFLYTEK will further expand its global market and promote the barrier-free communication worldwide.
