Five minutes before the regional Suncoast Emmy Awards began in Florida, LSU gymnastics videographer Giovanni Lamonte remembers his girlfriend asking one question. “Do you have a speech prepared?”
Convinced he had zero chance of winning in his category, he shook his head no, but she insisted he type something up just in case. So, he did what any nominee would do: He turned to AI. He typed a few bullet points into ChatGPT, turned it into an acceptance speech, and thought nothing else of it. That is, until his name was called as a recipient in the category of Sports Program – Post-Produced or Edited (Series). That’s when Lamonte says he blacked out.
“I don’t even remember what I said, probably nothing that I actually wrote down,” Lamonte recalled about the culminating moment of a 2023 season he will never forget.
Lamonte is the mastermind behind “The Climb,” the docuseries that took the internet by storm and led many other teams to create their own behind-the-scenes look at their own programs. His work began in 2019 as a student, the first year that current fifth-year gymnasts Kiya Johnson, Kai Rivers, and Alyona Shchennikova were freshmen. Originally working with the football program, Lamonte branched out to cover the gymnastics team in 2021, creating and…
