Yes, Linda’s Speedway will still rely on a human for its play-by-play announcer, Michael Batz, but he’ll have some company. An AI-driven announcer will join him for color commentary tonight.
When OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released an audio model, Batz became intrigued.
“You could have a complete conversation with AI and people could not tell if it was a human or not,” Batz said. “As a small car track operator, we have struggled to find people to fill the roles when older workers retire. Sometimes we are fortunate to have good young people, but it is no secret that they usually advance their careers and leave. It is tough financially to pay people enough to make them want to be here every Friday night and stay for years.”
Batz subscribed to OpenAI and began feeding it information about racing at Linda’s Speedway from spreadsheets and results on MyRacePass.
“I found this amazing tool, AI, that had the ability to remember who was in the top five in 2002 on this race date,” said Batz. “I saw announcers become older and wiser, but they lost the ability to remember all of the facts. AI doesn’t get weaker with age, it gets stronger. It builds a history of each driver.”
AI isn’t perfect, Batz acknowledges.
“AI has made major leaps and strides in improvement, but it will miss an obvious misspelling of a person’s name,” Batz said. “I double-check all the spellings of everyone’s names on Saturday morning. AI is building a database. It is preserving history. It is important that the information going into it is correct.”
As Batz announces the night of races, his co-announcer will listen and be at the ready to chime in.
“AI will present info on the screen,” said Batz. “Info like a driver’s background, season record, or how many spots they’ve moved up. I’ll read it, and hit a hot key if I want AI to announce it. AI cannot censor unnecessary information — stuff no one cares about. That’s why I will preview material and hit the key for AI to talk.”
OpenAI will not only listen, but also watch via a webcam and provide commentary on what it sees.
“I’m training AI to recognize cars on the racetrack,” Batz said. “I have flash cards — photos of the cars. When AI gets the driver info and stats correct from looking at a photo, the information is saved.”
When Linda’s Speedway announced the new AI commentator, not all were onboard.
“Announcers are a big driving force on whether fans can enjoy a race or not,” Batz said. “AI is an overwhelming concept to many fans. I don’t want AI announcing to flounder — then the skeptics will be louder and overcome the people who are optimistic about AI.
“We are trying to use AI for something good. I’m open-minded about the future. I hope most other people will approach AI in the same way.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
