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ESPN’s AI-generated recap had one job for U.S. soccer legend Alex Morgan’s final professional match.
Instead of describing the 15th minute of the game, when Morgan poignantly removed her cleats and walked off the field while tearfully waving to the packed crowd as they chanted her name, the ESPN AI-powered game summary made no mention of Morgan at all.
“The recap provides a standard rundown of the outcome before going into who scored goals and how the action played out,” wrote Awful Announcing, which spotted the glaring omission. “Nowhere in the 215-word recap is Morgan mentioned, let alone the fact that this was the two-time World Cup winner and Olympic gold medalist’s final pro match.”
The AI blurb of the match between the San Diego Wave (Morgan’s team) and the North Carolina Courage was published at 8:52 p.m. ET on Sunday night. It wasn’t updated until Monday morning at 8:59 a.m. ET to include mention of Morgan.
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ESPN announced last week that it would be using AI to generate recap stories on espn.com and the ESPN app for the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) and National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). The initiative was touted by the company as a way of leveraging AI to cover “underserved sports” that wouldn’t have had game recaps otherwise.
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Throughout Morgan’s illustrious career, the forward has been a leader in advocating for equal pay and elevating awareness of women’s soccer. That ESPN’s tool ostensibly designed to support the type of awareness Morgan has fought for didn’t mention her is a level of irony that’s hard to wrap one’s head around.
It’s also fodder for critics of AI-automated writing, since it didn’t take long for ESPN’s tool to make a big public mistake. The initial announcement on X already received negative reactions from AI-wary sports fans, who are sick of low-quality, inaccurate AI-generated game analysis.
The announcement said that recaps would be “reviewed by a human editor to ensure quality and accuracy.” But apparently, Morgan’s retirement didn’t seem worth mentioning.
