Arab News

RIYADH: Organizers of the rematch between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk have released a video of how an Artificial Intelligence powered 4th judge will score the fight  between the heavyweights this Saturday.

The much anticipated rematch between Britain’s Fury and Ukraine’s Usyk will take place in Riyadh, as part of the cultural and sporting spectacle known as Riyadh Season.

The video, posted early on Friday by the Saudi entertainment authority chief, Turki Alalshikh, features an AI judge explaining how it will score the bout.

“I am the first ever AI boxing judge,” the humanoid figure announces in the 38-second clip, “and I am here to bring fairness to the ring.”

The AI judge, powered by The Ring, a boxing magazine dedicated to the sport, is just an experiment and will not decide the fight, according to Alalshikh.

Boxing fights are usually scored by three judges, who use the 10-point system each round to choose a winner in case there is no knockout.

“I analyze every round, every move, and every decisive moment during the fight,” it said.

Like human judges, the bot will try to track landed punches, effective aggression and defense, collecting real-time metrics to calculate a score and decide who has won.

In the past, human judges have been accused of not scoring correctly, being biased, or more seriously, being corrupt, leading to controversy within the sport.

It is unclear what the long term impact of the experiment will be, but other sports such as football and cricket use similar technologies to support referees and umpires to make accurate decisions more quickly, which have led to fairer results.

Excitement continues to build for the Saturday night fight, which is expected to start some time after midnight in the Saudi capital. Fury, who exercised a clause in his contract for a rematch after his May defeat to the Ukrainian, who has an unblemished 21-0 record, is out for revenge, exciting boxing fans across the globe.

The fighters, who attended an event hosted by The Ring, faced-off for media photos on Thursday night ahead of the official Weigh-In on Friday.