Join Jim Groom and Tom Woodward to start day 2 as they delve into how generative AI tools like ChatGPT can be used to simulate, narrate, and enhance digital sports experiences inspired by Madden 2001. From generating game summaries and player previews to automating schedules and standings, the project demonstrates how AI can streamline the storytelling and administrative sides of a sports simulation. The session is a blend of practical experimentation with creative reflection, showing how structured prompts, GPT customization, and API integration can turn raw game data and screenshots into engaging media content. Beyond the technical achievements, AI Maddeness also raises questions about creativity, community, and cultural context when humans and machines co-author digital play.
Comments Archive
reclaimhosting: Welcome to the Chat
maren: Morning everyone. Looking forward to this session
Stephen Downes: OK, I'm here. How did anyone who is not me find this? Or am I the only one here?
Jim Groom: Hi Stephen, welcome!
Stephen Downes: Hiya Jim
pete: im here too .. and very interested to talk about ai (and all of the issues i have with it) with everyone here :)
Jim Groom: I did love when Tom argued with AI about using images as a parody and winning for AI Maddeness
Martin: don't mess with Tom is the message I'm taking from that
twwoodward: I'm mean to humans and technologies.
Jim Groom: @pete Great to have to have!
taylorjadin: at any point you have to keep in mind thats a tool that simulates a two sided conversation
so yeah all kinds of dumb stuff that you wouldnt expect to work with a deterministic system or program often do!
taylorjadin: and lots of other things dont lol!
pete: @taylor i hear that reframing .. my concerns begin much earlier on the conveyor belt (before it arrives on our screen) .. and what these tools are built to do (scrape data, monetize us further) .. and what larger social impact they have on lots of people using them .. not focused so much on it churning out dumb stuff .. because that stuff is going to continue to get less and less dumb.
Martin: last year I kept a spreadsheet of UK ice hockey scores, this year I tried to automate it with ChatGPT. It was awful! It kept saying it could do stuff, and then it couldn't. It also hallucianted scores (kind of important in keeping game data). I gave up in the end - it seemed like a thing Ai should be able to do, but without Tom level expertise, it was hopeless
twwoodward: @martin for that kind of thing, I'd probably do more traditional scraping and possibly get some ai help with that code . . . some of the AI browsers do decent in-tab scraping . . .
pete: im a little lost in the conversation for a minute .. are y'all talking about chat gpt generating comments on someone's blog post?
Jim Groom: @Martin I had a lot of issues with it managing ongoing cumulative data, so doing it weekly forced it to reconcile with my oversight for standings and schedules (weekly scores), in particular. But that is where the code it created to do the standings and scheduling somewhat automated did make things somewhat easier. I am happy to broker a deal between you and Tommy!
twwoodward: @pete yes, when Jim posts a game post, he gets x number of automatic comments based on personas/users we define in normal WP
taylorjadin: @pete same page as you there, I think
I dont trust the big companies / investment pushing this stuff as far as I could throw their giant office buildings, I find their arguments around fair use on training data hypocritical, and I find lots of the productization strategy gross
Martin: @tom, yeah I found a scraping plug-in. It just seemed like the sort of thing AI should be able to do...
Jim Groom: @pete we are, the ChatGPT API is pulling in fake comments as part of an experiment. And to be clear on your earlier comment, I am not pretending this is necessarily useful, needed, or good. That said, I am thinking of this as a self-contained sports universe that is somewhat auto-generated to kind of explore the ways in which this culture works.
Ed Beck: Yeah, I tried to create a custom WordPress theme with AI support. Mostly ChatGPT and Claude inside the Cursor application. (Cursor is a fork of VS Code that integrates AI).
It was not easy, and I ended up doing a lot of it by hand. My prompts had to be so specific that it didn't really work well for me, because I had to really go through the documentation and understand how it needed to be done anyway.
twwoodward: @martin - the hype definitely says customer-level AI LLMs are the answer to everything! In my experience, not quite so much.
Stephen Downes: It would have been fun if, after the game, AI had interviewed you on the game, just like a sportscaster, then post the article based on the interview
pete: @tom and those comments are helpful or useful because .. they tell a story? because they call more attention to the original post? because it gives readers something new/creative to respond to? (not a gaming or sports person, so that may be impairing my understanding : )
Ed Beck: I'm working on an OER project where we are pulling data from federal financial disclosures, writing them to a custom database, and generating multiple views for comparing companies. The AI does a really good job with that.
twwoodward: @pete because they amused Jim . . . really nothing more than that
twwoodward: Just seeing what level of a crazy fake interactive world we could make
pete: @jim .. understood, that's helpful.
Martin: Football (soccer) manager or FIFA games would be great for this. I used to create whole narratives about taking Cardiff to win the European Cup in Football Manager :)
Stephen Downes: (For this chat window, I would have designed it so that the current chat stream occupies most of the right-hand column, with the text entry screen expanding only when I'm using it)
pete: also @tom, thanks again, also helpful :)
Jim Groom: @stephen I love that idea, and coming up is a discussion of what it would mean to make this an instantaneous post-game reality---which is very doable I think if EA Sports would share any of its data, which is another issue
Jim Groom: Here is that posts of the Falcons vs Rams https://aisports.zone/2025/10/01/rams-edge-falcons-in-thriller-26-23/
twwoodward: @stephen I'd probably give comments like that in place other than this stream h aha
Stephen Downes: You comment where you want to comment, I'll comment where I want to comment :)
twwoodward: @stephen I thought we were just giving random feedback for things!
Jim Groom: The whole idea of the ACF WP integration to have automated the preview posts for each game on AI maddeness, which at this point are all automated after the uploading of 10-20 screenshots of team and player stats https://aimaddeness.com/2025/11/02/curtis-martin-rolls-north-as-jets-chase-8-0-in-buffalo/
Jim Groom: @martin What Tom is talking about with databases and keeping the universe somewhat focused is where I got closer to consistent, reliable results
Ed Beck: "Spreadsheets already exist." 😂Please do not use machine time on the supercomputer to do a find and replace.
Jim Groom: @Stepehn this idea of the immediate media world, like the ssports caster, seems like it would be a no brainer now for these fantasy season.
pete: "im not going to re-arrange the deck chairs on the titanic .. but i'll play you out"
Stephen Downes: I once signed up for a MLB strategy game, where you play the role of manager (sort of an online version of Strat-o-matic). I had thought the game would generate an audio play-by-play of the game, as though I were listening to it on radio. Imagine my disappointment when it didn't.
Jim Groom: @stephen we can change all that now! Make the myths, Stephen!
Jim Groom: Also, the 1968 novel by Robert Coover The Universal baseball Association, Inc. J. Henry Waught is definitely part of the inspiration for this. A guy invents an entire imaginary baseball world and "plays it out," to quote Tom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universal_Baseball_Association,_Inc.,_J._Henry_Waugh,_Prop.