The new play-by-play announcer for the EA Sports NHL series says AI is used for some of his lines, but he’s fine with it because it makes the work less tedious.
John Bucigross, who has been an anchor for ESPN for the past 30 years, provides the commentary for NHL 27 alongside Chicago Blackhawks color commentator Darren Pang, with the pair replacing last year’s broadcast team of James Cybulski and Cheryl Pounder.
In an interview on the Chirping Zebras Podcast, Bucigross said that while it’s great being the new voice of the EA Sports NHL series, the actual work involved is boring and very repetitive,
“That’s such a cool thing to be a [part of] – it’s not fun to do, it is tedious,” he explained. “You say every name in the league. You have to say it three different ways.
“You make up these scenarios: ‘Okay, it’s 2-0 midway through the second, home team has a faceoff in the offensive zone. Give us something.’ That’s the hard part.
“I can read names all day for money. I’ll do anything for cash,” he joked, “but to come up with that stuff, it’s like, what? ‘You’re up by more than three goals, here’s an offensive zone faceoff. Give us a line or two.’ So you’re like, ‘well the Bruins off to a good start here in this one, they’ve got to like the way they’re playing’, you know, just something, right?
“And then you might mess up, you’ve gotta do it again. So, it it’s one of those things you’re glad to be a part of it, the end product… but you know, these things always change and develop.”
Bucigross then explained that commentary work isn’t a case of simply performing some recording sessions then returning the following year, because the nature of sport means the situation is always changing, requiring more voiceover sessions. As such, he said EA has been using AI to create some new lines for him to lighten the workload.
“It’s not all about a cartridge and a game anymore, right?” he said. “You can buy it online. The game can change. A guy might get traded. So I’m doing sessions still this summer and we’re going to start working on 28 now, 27’s not even out yet and we’re going to start working on 28.
“But they’re also using some AI stuff now. They played me some stuff back in my voice and it’s like ‘wow, that’s pretty good’. You know, if it means less work and the same check, I’ll take it.”
Bucigross says he works with EA to make sure AI commentary sounds authentic
Bucigross also explained that he’s working with EA to improve the AI commentary, because it currently says things that he wouldn’t say.
“Sometimes AI will get something wrong,” he said. “One of the guys was playing it back, and a lot of these aren’t maybe hardcore sports fans, you know, they’re video game extraordinaires, that’s what they do, they’re not always up on the vernacular.
“And so they were playing me back some of my AI voice and it’s like: ‘Score! And the crowd gets out of their chairs!’ And I was like ‘no, they’re not chairs, I know they look like a chair but we call them seats’. So little things like that, you’ve got to go back and listen because, you know, those words matter in sports.
“You can’t say ‘and the final score is four to six, the Red Sox lose’, you know, you can’t say ‘four to six’, you’ve got to say ‘six to four’. But then you can make AI smarter in the future. They’ll say seats, they won’t say chairs. You’ve got to manually put that in. But yeah, that was kind of a funny anecdote from the process.”
Earlier this year EA Sports FC commentator Guy Mowbray told the BBC that EA uses an AI recreation of his voice, with his permission, to record some of the game’s lines, given that he not only has to record the names of each of the game’s 20,000+ players, but also do so in different intonations to mark different situations (receiving a pass, taking a shot, scoring a goal, and so on).
In a statement made to the BBC at the time, EA said: “AI has long been part of our development pipeline – from animation to gameplay systems – and continues to support our teams in making better, more responsive football experiences. But when it comes to commentary and content, it’s always a collaboration with our talent – not a replacement.”
This attitude is reinforced elsewhere in the BBC article, where Mowbray explained that some of the game’s longer commentary lines can’t be created by anyone other than him, because they have to sound like something he’d naturally say.
“Say there is a scenario where a team is crossing the halfway line but we don’t know if it will develop into anything,” he said. “So, I might say ‘oh, a promising attack, what could they do from here’ as a line of commentary to explain that – but we need 10 different ways of doing that, so I will have to think of another nine ways of saying it.
“It can’t be scripted for me because it has got to be in my style and how I would say it in real life, so I have to think of those lines myself. It’s the same for Sue [Smith] on co-comms – she will need 10 different ways of adding insight or colour too.”
