AI Sportswire

Where sports meets AI innovation. Your ultimate source for AI news, tools and products shaping the sports and fitness industries.

Author

Tina Wilmott
June 12, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

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In today's email:

🚀 Perplexity AI hits 780 million monthly queries with 20% growth while expanding beyond search

⌚ Apple's Workout Buddy brings AI coaching directly to your Apple Watch

🎾 Wimbledon goes fully AI for line calling, replacing all human judges with Sony's Hawk-Eye

🤖 New AI-powered tools including fitness coaching, presentation creation, and video generation

💡 Ambassador Fit Check prompt to evaluate potential brand partnerships

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AI in Sports and Fitness

Apple's Workout Buddy brings AI coaching to your wrist. Apple announced at WWDC 2025 that its new Workout Buddy feature for Apple Watch will provide AI-powered encouragement and real-time workout analysis. Using Apple Intelligence, the feature analyzes your workout history, pace, and fitness ring data to deliver personalized coaching through a "dynamic, generative voice" modeled after Apple Fitness Plus trainers. Available with Bluetooth headphones, Workout Buddy supports running, walking, cycling, and strength training, offering everything from pep talks to achievement celebrations.

Wimbledon goes fully AI for line calling. Sony's Hawk-Eye technology will completely replace human line judges at Wimbledon this year, using 12 cameras and AI to make ball-in-or-out calls. The decision reflects growing demand for automated officiating due to referee shortages post-pandemic and increasing pressure on human officials from online bullying and sports gambling. Sony continues expanding its sports tech portfolio, recently acquiring motion capture company KinaTrax.

Reddit sues Anthropic over AI training data scraping. Reddit filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the Claude AI creator of illegally scraping user-generated content from sports subreddits and other communities without consent. The case has significant implications for sports content, as Reddit hosts millions of posts from sports fans in communities like r/sports (22 million members) and r/nba (17 million members). The lawsuit highlights growing concerns about AI companies using fan-generated sports discussions and analysis without permission.

Indian sports startup Machaxi raises $1.5M for AI badminton coaching. Bengaluru-based Machaxi secured funding led by Rainmatter (Zerodha's investment arm) to expand its AI-powered badminton coaching system. The startup partners with legend Prakash Padukone to create standardized, scalable coaching through AI that assists human trainers with performance tracking and drill optimization. They plan to establish 1,000+ coaching centers across India, addressing the gap in consistent, quality sports training in tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

🧰 Tools and Tips

  • Spurfit is an AI-driven platform that helps fitness coaches create personalized workout and meal plans, track client progress, and manage their business all in one place.

  • GigaBrain scans billions of discussions on reddit and other online communities to find the most useful posts and comments for you

  • Chronicle lets you create stunning presentations with AI-driven storytelling.

  •  Runway offers powerful AI tools that let you easily generate, edit, and transform videos, images, and creative content—all in your browser, with no technical skills required.

💡Prompt: Ambassador Fit Check

What it does:
This prompt helps you evaluate whether a potential sports ambassador is a strong match for your brand based on their social media presence, including content style, audience engagement, brand alignment, and potential risks.

Why it’s valuable:
It lets you quickly qualify or rule out influencer partnerships by simulating an in-depth analysis, helping you avoid costly mismatches and zero in on high-impact relationships. 

You are a marketing analyst. Your task is to evaluate the social media presence of [@handle] on [platform] as a potential ambassador for our brand.

Brand/product: [Insert product and what it does — e.g., recovery drink for runners]
Core values: [e.g., high performance, inclusivity, sustainability]
Target audience: [e.g., amateur endurance athletes age 25–40]

Based on their typical content, audience, and tone, assess the following:

Alignment with brand values and audience

Content authenticity and engagement style

Potential benefits and risks as an ambassador

End with a clear yes/no recommendation and rationale for long-term partnership potential.

Pro Tips:

👀 Use real handles to brainstorm fit, or test hypothetical ones for campaign planning.

📊 Want more depth? Add follower count, engagement stats, or sample post screenshots after the prompt.

📝 Keep a short list of 2–3 ideal values or tone traits your brand looks for — this helps the AI filter better.

Beyond Sports: AI News Bytes

OpenAI strikes unprecedented cloud deal with Google despite AI competition, adding Google Cloud services alongside Microsoft support as computing demands reshape rival dynamics.

Perplexity AI hits 780 million monthly queries with 20% growth while developing Comet browser to expand beyond search into action-oriented AI tasks.

Disney and Universal sue AI image generator Midjourney for allegedly reproducing copyrighted characters, marking a new frontier in AI copyright battles.

Amazon Ads enhances AI-powered Video Generator for all US customers, creating compelling video ads from existing assets and shopper data to democratize video advertising.

OpenAI banned ChatGPT accounts tied to Russian and Chinese cyber operations to disrupt malicious activities.

AI Art Challenge

Image of the day with the prompt: Cat fight from Karen Parnell

Send us your AI sports image here for next week’s issue using the prompt: Whale and standup paddle boarder.

Do you have ideas on what we should publish next? Respond to this email and let me know! I read every reply.

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