AI Camera Mistakes Linesman’s Head For Football, Ruins Game For Fans

@seagull81/Twitter

An artificial intelligence (AI) camera mistook a bald lineman’s head for a football and therefore meaning fans missed the majority of the game.

While football has welcomed the use of technology in its games in recent years, this was quite the faux pas for Scottish football team Inverness Caledonian Thistle (ICT) FC.

The football club only just announced that it would be using AI cameras for its matches earlier this month, which they probably which they hadn’t have done, now…

As per ICT FC’s website, the announcement read:

Following two successful test events in the last 14 days, the club is pleased to be able to announce our new live streaming partnership with StreamAMG which is in conjunction with the SPFL and Pixellot.

This exciting new partnership means that ICTFC will utilise live footage supplied by the newly installed Pixellot camera system installed at Caledonian Stadium. The Pixellot system uses cameras with in-built, AI, ball-tracking technology to produce live HD footage of all home SPFL Championship matches at Caledonian Stadium […].

However, as I’m sure you can imagine, fans were pretty disappointed to watch the lineman’s head for the duration of the game om Saturday, October 24, rather than where the actual football was going.

Someone has since made a rather entertaining edit of the ordeal.

See it here:

Many viewers complained about the technical glitch which reportedly caused fans to miss ITC’s goal being scored.

As I’m sure you can imagine, people have since took to social media to discuss the incident.

One person’s tweet that’s been liked almost 10,000 times read, ‘Inverness Caledonian Thistle don’t employ a cameraman as their camera is programmed to follow the ball throughout the match. The commentator had to apologise today as the camera kept on mistaking the ball for the linesman’s head…’

Someone else suggested bald linesmen be given wigs writing, ‘Alot of clubs use the same system. Maybe have to supply the linesman with a toupe’, while someone else dubbed it ‘a hard day and age for male pattern baldness in Inverness’.

Might be time to rehire those original cameramen, ICT FC…

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Niamh Shackleton

Niamh Shackleton is a pint sized person and journalist at UNILAD. After studying Multimedia Journalism at the University of Salford, she did a year at Caters News Agency as a features writer in Birmingham before deciding that Manchester is (arguably) one of the best places in the world, and therefore moved back up north. She’s also UNILAD’s unofficial crazy animal lady.