When snowboarding athletes hit the X Games Superpipe on Thursday, a new artificial intelligence (AI) technology will be judging them. According to X Games, the new cloud-based system will not impact the athletes’ scores — this year. However, this soft rollout is an experiment to help event organizers gauge how well this new technology could be integrated into future competitions.
“Maybe this could be a tool that sits next to judges, so you have four judges and then this (as an actual) judge,” Jeremy Bloom, CEO of X Games, told USA Today. “Or it could be a piece of technology that judges could interact with, just to make sure they saw the trick appropriately.”
The 2025 X Games will take place in Aspen, Colo., from January 23 to 25. The men’s and women’s Superpipe events will be the first times this system is put to use. However, similar technology has already been employed in other sporting events. The goal, according to Bloom, is to enhance the judges’ accuracy, objectivity, and perceptive abilities.
“What the viewer will see, I think, is a glimpse into the future, a real technological glimpse into the future of where this can go,” Bloom said.
AI Snowboard Judges: The Future of Objectivity
While this is an innovative step for X Games, it is not totally novel in sports. In 2019, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) first used an AI Judging Support System (JSS) at the Antwerp World Championships to judge pommel horse, rings, and vault back events. The JSS was a tool judges could use to review an athlete’s routine if there was a “blocked score.”
Similarly, baseball has started to utilize AI for ball and strike recognition to assist umpires. Spanish and Italian soccer leagues have also begun preliminary testing with semi-automated offside technology to help referees make more accurate calls.
“There are a lot of 50/50 decisions that judges need to make during competitions,” Steve Butcher, an international gymnastics judge and previous sports director of the FIG, told Technology Review. “No one wants to make the wrong call in the Olympic Games or World Championships or any competition where something major would be on the line.”
In the context of gymnastics, when athletes execute tricks, they’re making minute, subtle movements that require extremely trained eyes to notice. The JSS used by FIG helps those judges see things they might have otherwise missed — which translates to better, more objective results.
The AI judging system at the X Games will serve a very similar purpose.
“[The AI] is going to watch every millisecond of a run and be able to judge things like economy of motion, which is important to superpipe snowboarding … (and) the execution of that backflip,” Bloom said. “It can see if a rider drags their hand, which is a point deduction. It knows what a good landing looks like and what an okay landing looks like. And it knows with amazing precision.”
A Collaboration With Google
Bloom connected with Google co-founder Sergey Brin to bring this AI-powered snowboard-judging technology to life. According to Bloom, they wanted to create “the world’s first AI judge that can use every cutting-edge piece of technology that possibly exists.”
The AI judging system will use Google’s Vertex AI development platform and a network of high-definition cameras to capture snowboarders’ every movement. The videos will then be run through AI software that’s been trained using thousands of hours of previously recorded snowboarding data.
Snowsports has never used an AI technology like this. The upcoming X Games will be its debut and proof of concept. The experiment begins this Thursday, Jan. 23, with the men’s and women’s Superpipe events. You can tune in to watch the X Games live for free by visiting the event’s website.
