Good morning. This is LEADOFF, an early look at Atlanta sports.

In partnership with IBM Cloud, new smartphone apps have been developed for the Falcons, Atlanta United and Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Although stadium information will be accessible through both teams’ apps, a separate stadium app (coming soon) was needed for guests at other events, such as concerts and college football games.

A wide range of content about the teams and stadium will be available through the apps, which also feature tools to facilitate advance purchase of mobile parking passes or to receive point-to-point navigation to parking lots or decks through an integration with Waze.

And then there’s “Ask Arthur.”

That’s the name of the apps’ artificial intelligence feature that is designed to respond to fans’ questions about the game-day experience or logistics.

“‘Arthur’ will be your (virtual) concierge,” said Mike Gomes, senior vice president of fan experience for Arthur M. Blank Sports & Entertainment. “You can ask him questions about the stadium.

“We trialed this last year to see what are the most popular types of questions fans typically ask on game day. Those are loaded into the system, so (it) recognizes the key words and searches for an answer with a link so you can go find more detailed information.”

The text recognition tool won’t correctly respond to every question, Gomes acknowledged. But he expects “Arthur” to have a good record.

Click here for full story on MyAJC.com about how technology will serve fans in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

The Falcons will open the stadium Saturday with a preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals.

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