This upcoming season of ‘Thursday Night Football’ or TNF will mark the debut of a new set of AI-powered production innovations — called Prime Insights — that will enhance America’s National Football League (NFL) viewing experience on Prime Video for fans.

Powered by AWS, these proprietary advancements highlight key players, illuminate hidden aspects of the game, and forecast pivotal moments before they happen, Amazon said in a media statement yesterday.

“At Amazon, we’re uniquely positioned to accelerate the integration of AI into our live events, given the in-house expertise we’re able to collaborate with and the next-generation compute power that AWS provides,” said Jared Stacy, director of live sports production, Prime Video.

“We consistently push the teams to use AI and computer vision to deliver enhancements that will be meaningful to fans. We are excited by the progress, and the new innovations coming this season,” he added.

The new and returning AI-powered features for ‘Thursday Night Football’ that are paving the way in the industry for the integration of AI and live sports production include the following:

New Prime Insights

1. Defensive Vulnerability: The first AI-powered TNF feature that steps beyond highlighting players to identify key areas of the field. A proprietary machine learning model uses thousands of data points before the snap to analyze defensive and offensive formations, and highlight where the offense will—or should—attempt to attack.
2. Pressure Alert: TNF’s latest AI-powered model that tracks defenders attacking the offensive backfield during live action and highlights those that are in position to disrupt the play.
3. Coverage ID: Coverage Identification, another new feature set to debut this season, uses an AI model combined with live player tracking data to identify the defensive scheme (e.g. Zone, Man) for fans in real time before the snap.

Returning Prime Insights

4. Defensive Alerts: The AI-powered ‘Defensive Alerts’ feature emerged as a breakthrough last season, and is the first predictive behavior AI model ever employed within a live NFL broadcast. Driven by a proprietary deep learning network that gets stronger as more plays unfold, Defensive Alerts tracks the movements of defensive players before the snap and identifies “players of interest” in real-time that are likely to rush the quarterback.

When a probable blitzer is identified, a highlighted orb appears under them to give viewers a heads up. Defensive Alerts will be featured during every TNF main broadcast, becoming the first Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats innovation to make the transition.

5. Prime Targets: It identifies receivers that are open and likely to convert a first down. Through RFID chips in the players’ shoulder pads, Prime Targets tracks and highlights open receivers in real-time with a green orb when they meet qualifying logic.
6. Four-Down Territory: Utilizing Next Gen Stats, powered by AWS, and machine learning, Prime Video helps fans understand how fourth-down decisions are made by coaches in real time. In pivotal third-down down situations, a virtual line on the field indicates where the offense needs to advance the ball in order to earn an analytically strong “go for it” recommendation on fourth down.
7. Field Goal Target Zones: In order to provide more context surrounding drives where a field goal has added importance, such as at the end of a game or half, Field Goal Target Zones overlay multiple lines on the field that deliver the statistical likelihoods that a kicker will make a field goal.

Additional AI-driven Features

8. Key Plays: It leverages AI to provide fans with an ability to view in-game highlights and key moments on demand while watching TNF on Prime Video. A bank of pivotal moments builds as the game progresses and offers viewers immediate access to those key plays.
9. Rapid Recap: It assists those who join the game in-progress and want to catch up on the action they missed before entering the livestream. Accessible after selecting “Watch,” Rapid Recap employs AI to compile highlights, with the full recap lasting no longer than two minutes. Once caught up, fans are automatically dropped into live action.