AI engineers from Qwen work at a venue for the event. [Photo/Qwen]

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Feb 5 that the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will feature the first official large language model in Olympic history, built on Alibaba's Qwen AI model.

The milestone signals the Games' entry into the AI era and makes them the most tech-heavy Winter Olympics to date.

IOC President Kirsty Coventry said the technology will enable smarter operations and deeper engagement, while leaving a lasting legacy of AI-driven innovation for the Olympic Movement.

The endorsement places Hangzhou's artificial intelligence sector firmly in the global spotlight. As the core technology behind key Olympic systems, Qwen will support both event operations and public services, demonstrating the city's full-stack AI capabilities.

To aid in managing the Games, a multilingual NOC AI Assistant will process millions of words of official documents, allowing delegations worldwide to access real-time information on qualification, logistics and coordination in their native languages. For the public, an Olympic AI Assistant will be launched on Olympics.com to answer questions on rules and Olympic history.

Meanwhile, automated media descriptions powered by Qwen-VL will identify key moments in real time, while Alibaba's generative AI will produce multimedia content for digital storytelling. AI-enhanced broadcast technology will deliver advanced visual effects such as high-precision snow reconstruction, "bullet-time" and time-slice viewing across most events.

As a long-time Olympic partner, Alibaba has evolved from cloud broadcasting in Tokyo and cloud-based core systems in Beijing to AI-driven cloud computing in Paris, and now to the "intelligent brain" of Milan-Cortina.

The progression highlights Hangzhou's growing role in global sports technology innovation as well as its ambition to become China's leading AI innovation hub.

The "bullet-time" devices installed at an event venue. [Photo/Qwen]