Can AI mimic the expressive yet lulling real-time monologues of a sportscaster? Tennis fans are about to find out.

Those tuning in to highlight videos of the US Open tournament may encounter a prolific new color commentator for the first time this year: IBM AI platform watsonx.

The tech company, which has long supplied services to the annual event, is expanding its partnership with the US Tennis Association to include “audio commentary and text captions on video highlight reels of every men’s and women’s singles match,” it noted in a blog post. The videos will live on the US Open’s website as well as within the tournament’s official app.

IBM’s goal is not to phase out the well-known announcers who call the primetime action on TV, but to expand the number of matches and languages the league is able to cover with content, according to Monica Ellingson, sports and entertainment practice lead for IBM Consulting.

“We’re not here to replace all of the iconic commentators. Of course not,” Ellingson said last week on a press tour of IBM’s operations at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, which houses more than 17 courts. “But there are only so many of them. So it’s really just a matter of making the action here at the US Open accessible.”

Keep reading here.—PK

Instacart’s initial public offering is a long time coming: The company shelved IPO plans back in 2022 as soaring inflation, the still-ongoing war in Ukraine, and recession concerns shattered confidence in the global economy—a backdrop which eventually led Instacart to slash its market valuation by 40%.

But as online grocery stores flagged, Instacart bolstered its competitive advantage with fresh offerings such as a monthly subscription service.

“Online grocery is the largest category of e-commerce that Amazon doesn’t currently dominate, which is why they want to use their technological know-how to gain an advantage over traditional grocers,” Instacart CEO Fidji Simo wrote in a 2022 blog post.

Now it’s making another play for market dominance, and it’s putting less emphasis on its gig economy roots and more on the possibilities of cutting-edge technology, such as electronic shelf tags, mobile self-checkout, and AI-powered search.

John Clear, director at Alvarez & Marsal Consumer Retail Group, told Retail Brew that Instacart is trying to capitalize on the growing interest in AI and machine learning.

Keep reading here.—AV

At both the local and federal level, health systems and agencies are looking to develop programs to promote health equity—and improved patient data collection may be a good place to start.

Healthcare organizations can look at their patient population and social determinants of health data to help identify and find solutions for health disparities, which cost the industry about $93 billion in excess medical expenses each year, per a 2018 report from the WK Kellogg Foundation.

“Once you have the data, the sky’s the limit,” Lyndia Hayden, senior director of data integrity and equity analytics at the New York-based Mount Sinai Health System, told Healthcare Brew. “There’s a lot that you can do toward equitable practices and policies once you have data integrity, and that’s what we’re focusing on.”

Keep reading here.—KW

Stat: 80%. That’s the percentage of Canadian digital advertising dollars that go to Facebook and Google, Wired reported in a story about how Meta’s decision to block posts from news sites left Canadians unable to access critical information amid wildfires.

Quote: “Oh, intervention.”—Elon Musk, in a video post on his social media website showing a demo of a Tesla utilizing full self-driving mode headed toward oncoming traffic

Read: The end of the Googleverse (The Verge)

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