2026 Winter Olympics

The video begins with the 2022 Beijing Olympics emblem, which then the main woman "flies" through. She continues to float through space, with the Great Wall, ski lifts, and snow in the background, and then flies through the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics logo. As she moves through it, her clothes transform from skiing clothes to a generic East-asian dress. From this sequence, we see that the video is taking the audience back in time to past Winter Olympics locations. This is a strong notion, as it reminds us of how the Winter Olympics began a little over a century ago. However, we can see several inconsistencies already in the video: the windows on the Great Wall are misshapen and disjoint, colors vanish at random, and the ski lifts' details become lost at odd places. Not only that, but the dress that the woman wears for the PyeongChang sequence is also bizarre detail, since it is not quite specific to Korean culture. We can assume that this inconsistency would not have been included had there been more human involvement in the final product.

After the woman flies off, we move to the 2014 Sochi Olympics logo, set against a wide shot of snowy mountains and a lake. Here, the video's style changes. Whereas the Beijing and PyeongChang Olympics had cartoon-y elements, the landscape for this featured Winter Olympics is in a photorealistic style. In fact, after we move on from this shot to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the style changes again. The background for the Vancouver Olympics is forested — perhaps to prompt the audience to recall Canada's vast national parks — and here it is presented in an infographic style. These two sequences (and the Beijing sequence) feature elements of each respective country's natural landscapes. What becomes confusing is the shift in style. From the animated style from before to the photorealistic mountains to the simplified forest, it's confusing why the video even changes style in the first place. Not only that, but why is the woman not in these scenes?

As we move onto the 2006 Torino Olympics, the woman appears again, snowboarding across the screen with the Olympic colors trailing behind her. Her hair is now multicolored instead of brown, and the Torino Olympics emblem includes the tagline "Passion Lives Here." This adds to the continual inconsistencies that we see throughout this video. Taking the woman's hair color, for instance, we can reason that this is an artistic liberty, but we still have questions: What is its purpose? Why did the people in charge of creating this video/the AI generator make her hair that way? And why does this Olympic logo get a tagline, but we didn't see that with the others? With this, we can see that this video seems to do only the bare minimum — show past Winter Olympic events and their emblems. There is not much consistency in style, theme, or plot, asides from the woman. But, even with that, her design seems to change.

We see a snowy mountain range for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, then a bird flies around and perches on a pair of ski poles for the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Once again, these sequences are photorealistic. It seems this video aims to showcase iconic aspects of these locations, but it's inconsistent. It succeeds in this goal with the Salt Lake City Olympics by featuring the city's mountains, which it is known for, while it fails with the Nagano Olympics — we are not sure what significance the bird or mountains have in Japan. Additionally, the rings here with the Nagano Olympics logo violate Olympic ring rules (their colors cannot be altered). It potentially takes away from the International Olympic Committee's credability; how could they violate their own rules? This is a huge error that, again, would likely not have happened had there been more human involvement in this video's creation.

Here, the woman appears again, sledding through a burst of orange and pink. We only get a split second of the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics logo before moving on to the woman figure skating. Posters with past Olympic emblems lay around her, including those of the 1992 Albertville, 1988 Calgary, 1984 Sarajevo, and 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. This is the first time that multiple past Olympics are being featured at once. Arguably, this detail detracts from the video's quality, as it likely makes the audience wonder why these events did not get their own feature — perhaps they were running out of time and had to rush certain parts? To an extent, this inconsistency suggests a bias towards/against past games.

Now we have the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics, with the woman ski jumping off the logo. As she is midair, we zoom in on her eye. We move through her iris, transitioning into the 1972 Sapporo Olympics logo. We quickly move past this sequence to the next. With these two Olympic events, we see even more inconsistencies with what the video (either by oversight and/or AI-generated happenstance) decides to include. For example, the Innsbruck logo includes the dates of the Olympic events, while most of the other logos do not. The Sapporo Olympics doesn't even get its own special sequence — it's just the logo we get to see. Because of this, the message of how amazing past events were does not effectively come through here, and it doesn't allow the audience to feel moved in any way.

We get a rapid-fire sequence of morphing logos: the Sapporo Olympics quickly transforms into the 1968 Grenoble Olympic logo, which transforms into the 1964 Innsbruck Olympic logo, then to the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics, and finally into the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Olympics. Each of these shots lasts less than a second, making it difficult to understand which logo corresponds to each, especially for those unfamiliar with past Olympic logos, which is likely the majority of the audience. This sequence is jarring, since, before, we were able to sit with each past event a bit longer. All that these featured events have is a mere snippet. This makes the video even more perplexing, given that these events clearly do not receive equal time. The audience doesn’t get a chance to sit with each past game long enough to understand its significance in isolation or in relation to everything else.

We have the 1952 Oslo Olympics, represented by the Olympic and Norwegian flags propped up on ski poles. We can see some mechanical inaccuracies with how the Olympic flag moves. The Olympic rings on this flag seem distorted by some movements, and the black ring even turns blue. Two figures ski, and fireworks light up the night sky as the 1948 Moritz Olympics graphic appears. Again, this sequence is full of visual inaccuracies. At 00:00:49, specifically, white fragmented shapes appear to the left, and it's unclear as to what they are supposed to be. This is another reminder that the AI generator is unable to fully realize the visual elements of this narrative.

The main woman reappears, surrounded by posters featuring the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen and 1932 Lake Placid Olympics. Note that the Garmisch-Partenkirchen poster used in this shot mimics the one produced by Ludwig Hohlwein, a member of the Nazi Party and a prominent propaganda artist at the time. While the poster does not itself contain any directly problematic content, it nonetheless carries weight given the artist, the stylization, and the historical context. It’s a dark reminder of the time period leading up to World War II. One should wonder why the IOC allowed this detail to be included. They themselves know about the historical background of each game, and it's strange that this sequence ignores the complex nature of the games at this time. For that matter, there is no incorporation of the history of the games in this ceremonial video. There is no real significance given to any of the events, and it's ironic that a video meant to "go back in time" does not give importance to actual Olympic history. The poster is yet another example of oversight over what the AI generator happened to produce. It reminds us that the generator is unaware of context beyond what it is prompted to do.

A poster-like graphic featuring the 1928 St. Moritz Olympics unfolds, and then quickly transitions to the woman playing hockey. There are several other hockey players whose faces have lost or distorted features. The woman shoots the hockey puck, leading to a surreal depiction of a phoenix with a 1924 Chamonix Olympics border. This is a recreation of the original Chamonix Olympics promotional poster, and what lies beyond the borders in this video is the generator's estimation. We can assume that the amorphous yellow cluster at the bottom right of the frame is supposed to be more bobsledders that the AI generator could not properly represent. We suddenly cut to the woman standing on the phoenix. She falls, lands in the snow, and we end here. The ending, like several other aspects of this video, is frankly bizarre. While not necessarily disturbing or obviously confusing, there's simply no clear reason given for why the video should end this way. The audience who first saw this at the opening ceremony was full of athletes, who should have been able to feel empowered by the history of the Olympics, which is full of struggles and triumphs. But, the video has no clear point of view. It fails to produce an effective narrative with a dynamic storyline. It accomplishes displaying various past Olympic posters or emblems, but it falls short in conveying how incredible it is that the Winter Olympics have been around, showcasing international athletic talent, for a century now.