What would you have done? Wimbledon swapped its 300 line judges for AI — then found it had no safety net when the system went dark

After 147 years, Wimbledon replaced its roughly 300 line judges with electronic line-calling in 2025. Three options were on the table: (A) hand everything to the AI and remove the judges; (B) deploy the AI but keep judges on standby, ready to step back in; (C) keep the judges and use the AI only for after-the-fact review. The tournament chose (A).

On 6 July, an operator mistakenly switched off ball tracking on part of the court; three balls went uncalled, the umpire was never told the system was down, and a point had to be replayed. The failure wasn’t an AI getting it wrong — it was that, once the humans were gone, no one was positioned to notice the machine had fallen silent. The lesson holds for any organization: handing a judgment to the machine doesn’t remove the need for a safety net, it shifts the question of who holds it. Before you remove the people a process leaned on, define and test the fallback — an alert when the tool is off or unsure, and someone still placed to take the call.

Source: Associated Press, “Wimbledon officials apologise after electronic line-calling turned off,” 7 July 2025.