Artificial intelligence takes over the NBA playoffs: How the league gets you to ask AI about basketball

Google’s “AI Mode” campaign starring

The main lever of this initiative is the renewed partnership with Google, which resulted in a major marketing campaign launched just for the playoffs. In a series of television and digital ads, stars like Luke Dončić, Stephen Curry and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander use Google Search with the “AI Mode” feature to analyze moves and gain deeper insight into the game. The new Google campaign for the NBA playoffs also includes longer video formats for social networks, in which Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo with the help ofć artificial intelligences analyze their distinctive skills in detail.

The idea is to use moreć there is a habit of spectators to look for statistics and information about the games on their phones during the game. Through more than 50 planned integrations live during broadcasts on major networks such as NBC, Disney and Amazon Prime, viewers are directly invited to use “AI Mode” and to ask questions about the action on the field. The commentators themselves invite them to do so, of course if they watch the original broadcast of American television houses. Some questions can be very superficial, and it can be seen that the target for them is viewers who are still learning the basics of basketball. But there are also many more advanced questions, such as ‘Why is the high pick and roll so successful against Houston?’, ‘Why is the Spain action used?’, and ‘What do teams get when they introduce low lineups?’.

Quietly introduced a chatbot within the application

While the partnership with Google is being promoted with all the bells and whistles, the NBA has taken a much more subtle approach for its own solution. A chatbot named “Ask NBA (Beta)” has been quietly introduced inside the official NBA app. This functionality allows users to ask direct questions about matches, players, teams, statistics, rules and league history.

Although not aggressively advertised, the chatbot is another channel through which the league wants to deepen fan engagement. Unlike Google’s tool, which is part of a broader search ecosystem, “Ask NBA” is focused exclusively on basketball content within the league’s official application.

Part of a wider technology strategy

These question-asking tools are just the tip of the iceberg in the NBA’s comprehensive AI strategy. In cooperation with Microsoft, through their Azure platform, the “NBA Insights” feature was developed, which offers real-time summaries and explanations of the key moments of the game, answering the question “why” a certain move was important. At the same time, a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) brings brand-new, AI-powered stats like “Defensive Box Score” and “Shot Difficulty,” which quantify aspects of the game that were previously impossible to accurately measure. Together, these initiatives show a clear direction for the league: to use the most advanced technology to make the game more understandable and engaging for a global and digitally literate audience.

*with the use of AI