“2min chrono” an AI-generated podcast to cover news from the Paris 2024 Olympics
Reading time: 5 minutes
It is still difficult for me to put into words the atmosphere that reigned in France during these Games. If I still had to try to describe this enchanted parenthesis, I would say that we experienced a moment full of sweetness and fervor. I believe that this opening ceremony will remain engraved in the annals, and that the performances of the Olympians deserve to flesh out the great myths of Homer.
At Devoteam, in our own way, we also participated in the Olympics. Four weeks before the opening ceremony, the Devoteam team, made up of Fabien Lallemand, Nicolas Pellegrin, Melchior Obame and myself, was in the starting blocks. With an ambitious project: to deliver to the media L’Équipe, a daily podcast, generated by AI and which would cover the news of the Olympics
From prompt engineering to task automation, this podcast, called “2min chrono” is based on Amazonian substrate and the LLM Claude 3.5 Sonnet to generate text content based on sports media articles and data. The model collects, prioritizes and summarizes the highlights of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, before producing a news flash following the editorial line of L’Équipe. Eleven Labs then generates the voice of the “presenter” to bring the podcast to life. Comments, recap of the day before, chances of podiums, medal table: all the essential information is present in this 2-minute summary.
Meeting with Raphaël Dardeau, Team CTO.
It’s already been 3 weeks since 2min chrono released its last issue on the occasion of the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. What were the main contributions of the project for the Team?
This project allowed the Team to overcoming some initial fears related to artificial intelligence. A fear which may be legitimate, of course, especially among the editorial staff. Today, we know that we are capable of capitalizing intelligently on these subjects. Initially, there was some reluctance, but the team quickly became attracted to the idea of the podcast by listening to the first demos, which made the process much easier.
Beyond the fears, we also realized that we are capable of taking on ambitious challenges with great responsiveness. No doubt we will be able to explore even faster in the future. The human aspect was also decisive; to carry out a project with such tight deadlines, trust between teams was essential.
Fact: It took no less than 32 versions of prompts to have a result that met our expectations and was capable of remaining qualitative in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
How would you describe the collaboration with Devoteam on this project?
The collaboration was a real success. We worked hand-in-hand with Devoteam, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Eleven Labs to develop a daily AI-generated podcast. A first for our team.
For a sports media like L’Équipe, the Olympic Games are a unique opportunity to innovate. During our first meeting with Devoteam, I felt great excitement and a very strong “want to go”. This immediately gave me confidence. Beyond this fundamental aspect, the Devoteam team was always in action and extremely responsive. Adjustment requests were immediately applied and operational. The end result exceeded our expectations.
What impact did this project have on the team dynamic?
This project was significant for the team, which had previously struggled with another AI-based project during the Olympics. However, “2min chrono” restored confidence at all levels. Even if we still lack the perspective to assess all the opportunities that this could open up, it is certain that other projects of this type will see the light of day. We just need time to assimilate this experience and consider new initiatives.
Short extract of the execution of steps allowing to deliver 2min flat.
Less than 4 weeks, and in the middle of summer: the deadline was extremely tight to deliver this project. Did you have to adjust your working approach for this project?
To carry out this project successfully, it was necessary to adopt a new way of working. The processes surrounding project monitoring have been reduced to their strict minimum. It was about being efficient and always in actionwhich the Devoteam team managed to do brilliantly.
This project took us out of the mold of classic projects, putting us back into the agile mindset of the past, where we could deliver Proof of Concepts in a few days, due to the freedom and speed of execution.
Did the end result meet your expectations?
Absolutely. The final result amazed many observers. A friend told me that he would have been unable to guess whether or not it was an AI that produced the podcast. The short two-minute format lent itself perfectly to the Olympics, but it was nevertheless necessary meet strict editorial constraints in terms of tone, duration, and priority of information. Several of our colleagues relayed the initiative which probably aroused curiosity.
We were able to meet this challenge by optimizing each decision and I am very satisfied with the result.
Do : Between 3000 and 5000 – This is the number of daily listeners of 2min flat with a peak of more than 10,000 listeners.
Conclusion
This AI-generated podcast project for the Paris 2024 Olympics was an adventure rich in lessons. It demonstrated not only the ability of L’Équipe and Devoteam to innovate in the context of major sporting eventsbut also the importance of solid human collaboration, where trust and speed of execution are essential. This project is probably the first in a long series which will mark the evolution of our way of covering major sporting events.
Want to know more about technological innovation for sport? We invite you to a conference cocktail on September 17 From performance to fan engagement.
Raphaël Dardeau will also return to the creation of 2min chrono:
Registration and evening program
Until then, take the time to listen to the podcast that covered the athletes’ performance!
