Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth will forever be connected.
They’re no longer the signature voices of Sunday Night Football on NBC, with Mike Tirico succeeding Michaels, who himself moved to Thursday Night Football on Prime Video. But before that, the legendary duo entertained fans for nearly 15 years, capping off countless NFL Sundays across the nation.
And now Collinsworth finds himself describing in detail to Kay Adams how an AI version of Michaels’ voice will be part of Peacock’s Olympic coverage. While that sounds like a MadLibs sentence, it’s true — an artificial intelligence-generated version of Michaels’ voice will narrate customized recaps for users on Peacock daily.
Never thought we’d see the day where Cris Collinsworth explains A.I. to us 😅
Al Michael’s Olympic A.I. explained @CollinsworthPFF 🔊
@heykayadams pic.twitter.com/mPDcxeRDqq— Up & Adams (@UpAndAdamsShow) July 9, 2024
“I go, ‘You’re a genius. I’ve never seen anybody smarter than you,'” Collinsworth says. “He’s gonna make so much money to have his voice on the Olympics with doing zero work. He will be doing as little as I’m doing and not getting paid, and he’ll be getting paid.
“The man is an utter genius. But he does have one of his billionaire friends that we get to go on his yacht because we’re going to go to Italy afterwards and go hang out down there ’cause I gotta work on my tan a little bit. So, he’s got a billionaire guy down there, we get to go hang on the yacht for a little bit.”
While Collinsworth talked about how genius it was for Michaels to do this, he informed Adams that an AI version of himself would be coming to a show near you at Pro Football Focus. He wouldn’t divulge more details than hinting at this technology’s incredible possibilities for PFF’s analysis and content creation.
“It’s unbelievable…We do all these game scripts and storylines and all these things…and do it in your voice,” he says. “And you just stay home. They put a picture of you up there, and you stay home, and you got a whole show, and it sounds just like you. If you haven’t heard it yet, you gotta do it. They did a thing of me doing PFF highlights in my voice, and you sit there, and you can’t even believe it.
“It’s not like taped. It’s not like any part of your voice. They put old audio tapes of your voice in a machine, and it comes out, and it’s you. For me, all the different stutters and starts and stops — exactly how I talk. It’s unbelievable. Wait ’til you hear Al Michaels do it; you’ll think it’s Al. And he’ll be sitting in the swimming venue with me and cheering on our USA.”
Clearly, Collinsworth doesn’t seem to be remotely concerned about artificial intelligence’s potential pitfalls. Instead, he sees it as a revolutionary step in sports broadcasting, offering a glimpse into a future where AI-powered announcers become commonplace.
