AI replays, cloud broadcast to shape how we watch Milano Cortina 2026

When an alpine skier sticks a landing or a figure skater nails a quad jump at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, viewers may see the moment reconstructed in 3D within seconds – rotating smoothly in midair, frozen across multiple phases of motion.

That capability comes from a new generation of AI-driven replay and cloud broadcasting systems that Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) plan to deploy across the Games, with Alibaba providing cloud and AI infrastructure as the Olympics continue their shift toward cloud-native production.

At the center of the effort is an upgraded real-time 360-degree replay system that uses AI to separate athletes from visually complex backgrounds such as snow and ice. The tech can generate immersive 3D replays in roughly 15 to 20 seconds – fast enough for live broadcast. A new feature, dubbed "Spacetime Slices," combines multiple moments of an athlete's movement into a single visual, offering viewers a clearer look at technique and performance. The system is expected to be used across 17 winter sports.

Behind the scenes, AI will also change how Olympic footage is processed and found. OBS is developing an automatic media description system that identifies athletes and key moments, then tags and summarizes video almost instantly. Broadcasters will be able to search footage using natural-language queries – such as asking for a specific medal-winning performance – rather than manually sorting through hours of content.

Milano Cortina 2026 will further expand cloud-based broadcasting, which has grown from an experiment at Tokyo 2020 into a core Olympic distribution method. The cloud platform will deliver hundreds of live video and audio feeds to nearly 40 broadcasters, reducing reliance on satellite links and lowering technical barriers for smaller media organizations.

The Games will also mark the IOC's first use of large language model-based tools for fans and internal operations, including multilingual chat assistants on olympics.com and AI-powered search across the Olympic archives, which now span more than eight petabytes of historical media.

Together, organizers say, the technologies aim to make the Olympics not just easier to produce, but easier to understand – preserving moments while offering fans new ways to experience them in real time.