Alibaba Transform Milano Cortina 2026 with AI-Driven Broadcasting

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has teamed up with Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to roll out advanced cloud and AI systems for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

The collaboration, which builds on deployments at Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022 and Paris 2024, advances the IOC’s shift to cloud-first, AI-enabled broadcasting. The aim is to enrich viewing for global audiences, streamline broadcaster operations, and transform how Olympic content is captured, managed and preserved at scale.

Dr. Feifei Li, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, President of International Business, said: “Each Olympic Games presents unique challenges in scale, geography, and complexity. For Milano Cortina 2026, we are applying cloud and AI capabilities to make broadcasts more dynamic, workflows more efficient, and Olympic moments more accessible to audiences around the world.”

For on-screen coverage, Alibaba Cloud is introducing upgraded Real-Time 360º Replay systems that produce immersive, multi-angle replays with fluid camera moves and stroboscopic effects. Using AI to separate athletes from complex snow and ice backgrounds, the system can generate three-dimensional reconstructions of decisive moments in 15–20 seconds—quick enough for live use. It will span 17 sports and disciplines, including ice hockey, freestyle skiing, figure skating and ski jumping. Alongside the BulletTime effects debuted at Beijing 2022, a new Spacetime Slices feature composites multiple phases of an athlete’s motion into a single frame to help viewers grasp technique and performance.

On the media production side, OBS is in early development of an Automatic Media Description (AMD) System powered by Alibaba’s Qwen large language model. The tool automatically recognises athletes and key moments, creates descriptions, and tags video assets within seconds, cutting manual workload. Using natural-language prompts—such as “find the figure skating gold medal performance”—OBS teams can locate material almost instantly, improving discovery and speeding up storytelling across platforms.

Cloud broadcasting will be further scaled at Milano Cortina 2026. Since debuting at Tokyo 2020, OBS Live Cloud has grown from an optional add-on to a core distribution platform and, by Paris 2024, the primary method for remote delivery. For 2026, it will support 39 broadcasters with 428 live video feeds (including 26 ultra-high-definition streams) and 72 audio feeds. By supplanting satellite links and dedicated lines, the cloud model lowers cost, setup time and complexity while boosting flexibility and resilience. For the first time, the OBS Olympic Video Player (OVP) will deliver high-definition live streams over Alibaba Cloud infrastructure, giving smaller broadcasters access to professional-grade capabilities without heavy upfront spend.

Yiannis Exarchos, CEO, Olympic Broadcasting Services, said “Alibaba Cloud provides the foundation that makes large-scale AI possible, making our operations more efficient and unlocking new opportunities to enhance viewers’ experience and deepen their understanding of the sport and athletes’ performances on the world’s biggest stage.”

Content output will also hit new highs, with more than 5,000 short-form assets—such as behind-the-scenes clips, highlights and reactions—distributed via OBS Content+, a cloud platform powered by Alibaba Cloud. Its discovery tools enable teams worldwide to find, edit and publish content efficiently from anywhere.

In an Olympic first, the IOC has introduced a large-language-model-based initiative, powered by Alibaba’s Qwen, called “Olympic AI Assistants” to support global fan engagement and internal operations. The Olympic AI Assistant on olympics.com offers multilingual conversational support and real-time event information through a chat interface. The same technology will power personalised AI audio guides at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. Internally, a Qwen-powered AI Assistant on the IOC’s secure portal for National Olympic Committees (NOCs) helps staff retrieve documents, policies and grant guidelines via natural-language queries, with multilingual translation built in.

Alibaba Cloud is also upgrading Sports AI, the cloud-based media archiving platform first used at Paris 2024. Managing more than eight petabytes of historical Olympic media, it now adds AI tagging, video and conversational search to make decades of material instantly discoverable. Qwen-powered conversational search allows users to request specific clips in plain language, while integration with the IOC’s media asset platform, Flex, enables fully automatic tagging that turns previously unused footage into a searchable knowledge library.

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