Alibaba Cloud’s AI technology brings colors to historical sports moments
Alibaba Group, a leading e-commerce and technology company, and worldwide partner of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), premiered a short film this evening entitled “To the Greatness of HER”. The 8-minute video is dedicated to the evolution of gender equality since the 19th century. Leveraging Alibaba’s Cloud-based Artificial Intelligence, vintage photographs of female athletes’ achievements from past Olympic Games were colorised and restored to be featured in the short film and exhibited at the Alibaba Evening on July 24 in Paris ahead of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 (Paris 2024).
Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, said, “To the Greatness of HER highlights the great progress of women in sports through the course of history. My heartfelt thanks go to our friends at Alibaba for using AI-powered technology to let the achievements of these women in sports shine through the full spectrum of colors. More importantly, the film allows us to reflect on one of the most important priorities of the Olympic community – empowering women in and through sports.”
“Gender equality is a team sport. We all have a role to play and we all have to lead by example. With this film, Alibaba is leading by example and using its technological expertise to highlight this important topic,” added Bach.
The IOC’s commitment to gender equality has significantly increased female athlete participations; from 2.2% in Paris 1900, when women athletes first competed for the modern Olympics, to 4.4% in Paris 1924, exactly a century ago when the city last hosted the Games, to a notable 50% at the current Olympic Games Paris 2024 – as the IOC has distributed quotas evenly between female and male athletes for the first time.
To commemorate this milestone, Alibaba created a short film entitled: “To the Greatness of HER,” featuring three prominent female athletes – Zhang Shan from China, Kathrine Switzer from the US, and Suzanne Lenglen from France.
Zhang Shan, Olympic champion who made history at the Olympic Games Barcelona 1992 by winning the gold medal in a mixed-gender skeet shooting event. “When I competed in the Olympic Games Barcelona 1992 for the mixed skeet shooting title, I didn’t do it to prove anything. I simply love the sport. By reliving that moment, I hope we can encourage more people to pursue the sports that they are passionate about,” said Zhang at Alibaba Evening.
Kathrine Switzer, a marathon runner, author, and advocator for women in sports, made history in 1967 as the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon. Despite an official’s attempt to remove her, she finished, sparking a movement for gender equality in sports and leading to the inclusion of the women’s marathon in the Olympics. “Women in sports have come a long way since I first ran the Boston Marathon in 1967. It’s been great to see how many have really reached for the heights and competed in the Olympic Games. Seeing these historical photos renewed by technology enables us to reflect on how far we’ve come and to continue the progress of bringing sport opportunities to more women worldwide,” said Kathrine said at the event.
Premiered at the Alibaba Evening, the short film employs cloud-based AI technologies to restore old photos from historical archives through critical steps including clarity processing to enhance image resolution and colorizing grayscale images with vibrant colors using advanced AI models.
“Alibaba is proud to collaborate closely with the IOC to champion inclusivity and equity, core values that Alibaba firmly upholds,” Chris Tung, President of Alibaba Group, Strategic Development. “By using cloud-based AI to deepen our understanding of the past and shine a light on the achievements of female athletes, this project is a great example to showcase how technology can be utilized to promote the values we cherish.”
As a global technology pioneer, Alibaba Group is committed to fostering a culture that values diversity, equity, and inclusion for employees to grow, create value and get support and care. At Alibaba, women account for 47.2% of its total employees. Women’s innovation and leadership are playing an increasingly important role in company development, with 41.4% of management and 30% of the board of directors of the Group are female.
Partnership with IOC to Revitalize Historic Moments of Paris 1924 through Cloud-based AI
Alibaba Cloud is also partnering with the IOC to harness its cloud-based AI for transforming sports archiving by revitalizing historical moments from Paris 1924. Through Alibaba Cloud’s deep learning models, the selected Olympic archive footage from Paris 1924 have been restored and colorized, breathing new life into these historical moments and allowing audiences to fully experience and relive Olympic history through AI innovation.
To revive the dynamic Olympic moments from a century past, Alibaba Cloud leveraged its self-proprietary imperfection detection and correction technology for greyscale films and a sophisticated video restoration model to eradicate video imperfections, reduce noise, and enhance resolution. It also applied its cutting-edge video colorization models to ensure precise color fidelity and to seamlessly extend the colorization from select keyframes across the entire footage, achieving consistency and vibrancy throughout the video segments.
Since Alibaba Group’s worldwide partnership with the IOC started in 2017, its Cloud division has been supporting digitalization of the Olympics with its proven cloud technologies. Alibaba Cloud is committed to help transforming the experience of the Olympic Games further by not only making Paris 2024 even more efficient and engaging, but also promoting inclusivity through creating more meaningful and memorable experience for everyone involved.