John McEnroe will have some extra competition when he gets behind the mic at The All England Club to call Wimbledon ... the tennis tourney announced they're using artificial intelligence to cover this year's event!
But, deep breath ... the AI will primarily be used for online highlight videos.
The All England Club partnered with IBM, and will use their Watsonx AI platform to "produce tennis commentary" for all highlight packages online. IBM says the technology has been trained extensively on the "unique language of tennis."
"I see AI as very much complementing the human element, rather than replacing," IBM exec Kevin Farrar said.
"You can't replace John McEnroe doing commentary. That human element always needs to be there. It's very much supplementing and complementing."
As for how good the AI will be, it's been designed "with varied sentence structure and vocabulary to make the clips informative and engaging," according to IBM.
Wimbledon also says they'll use the Watsonx technology to provide advanced analytics, including a player's chances of advancing to the finals, given their draw.
Other top sports organizations across the world have used similar technology in similar ways, including The Masters, who also used AI for select commentary.
Wimbledon starts July 3 and runs through July 16.