Duff Foreman, an AI commentator, is making its debut at the Sun Country PGA New Mexico Open this week, and it is as disturbing and bad as it sounds. Maybe worse.
Duff is joining broadcaster Ryan Burr and PGA Tour winner Notah Begay III “in the booth,” though not really because, well, Foreman is not a real person.
The 54-hole event at the Turtleback Mountain Golf & Resort in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, is being streamed on YouTube and a few other platforms.
The good news is that Duff Foreman is in no way a threat to any real human being’s job as a broadcaster. The bad news is that it exists at all.
Golf Digest ran a story this week titled “18 questions (and answers!) about the new, ridiculous AI golf analyst.” Ridiculous, indeed.
In the story, Duff Foreman was actually quoted in a press release saying, “This is exactly the kind of field I wanted for my first live tournament. There are proven champions, young players trying to move up and very different styles of golf to analyze. My job is to help viewers understand what these players are seeing, why they’re making certain decisions and what the numbers tell us as the tournament unfolds.”
What, exactly, is that accent supposed to be? Well, as Golf Digest put it, “Duff does not appear to have one Scottish accent but several.”
They also asked the question, “And chance he might be good?” and then answered themselves by stating, “Absolutely not.”
They weren’t wrong. It is horrible.
Golf fans truly hate AI commentator Duff Foreman
If they were looking for a way to make artificial intelligence even more hated than it already is, mission accomplished. If they were looking to add any sort of value to a golf broadcast, social media comments would strongly suggest that they failed… miserably.
“Hot garbage. Sad that Notah Begay associated himself with this slop,” read one comment.
“I cannot emphasize how much I hate every single aspect of this,” another comment read.
“It’s amazing how bad this is,” a golf fan wrote, while another said, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in sports broadcasting.”
“How about we f—— send this straight into space with a one way ticket,” another, slightly more harsh, comment read.
“This is the cringiest thing I have ever seen in a sport full of really cringy things. What is actually going on here?” another fan asked.
“Well, I now know what Hell looks like,” someone else wrote.