.svg)
Gaming executives have said a principal benefit to the industry of artificial intelligence (AI) is allowing companies to gain a more complete picture of a player who may have responsible gambling issues that cannot be identified by just one potential red flag.
During a panel discussion presented by the online gaming trade group iDEA as part of its "Power Lunch Summit" series, experts said Wednesday (September 18) that AI is already affecting how companies look into responsible gaming issues, and models are continuing to improve.
“It's transforming a lot,” said Anthony D’Angelo, head of responsible gaming for Fanatics. “There's really a few different applications that I can think of, but the main ones that are really impactful, I believe, are going to be prevention, in a sense of proactive prevention or detection of problem gambling and responsible gaming, as well as large language models, as it relates to chat assistance.”
D'Angelo added that the chat assistance model is “not quite there yet”, and that companies still want those seeking responsible gaming assistance to talk to a human rather than an AI chatbot.
One of the primary benefits that supporters of AI usage tout is the ability to be more proactive in flagging responsible gaming concerns, rather than reacting to problems that already exist or have been acknowledged by players themselves, such as imposing limits or self-exclusion.
"What AI allows us to do is we can then flag things right away if a customer frequently flags for deposit failures, for insufficient funds … that's an indication that maybe that customer is playing beyond their means with an affordability standpoint, not a direct indication, but something that we might want to be aware of,” he said.
"When we look at those triggers, those red flags, right, and we look at them individually, I would say many if not all, are probably not direct indications of [problem gambling],” he added. “But when you combine them, and you can do it with AI in this large algorithmic model, we can then say, okay, this happened for this customer, [and then] this happened and this happened. This customer, their risk score, for example, might be a certain number, and then based on that number, maybe we do something.”
Charmaine Hogan, head of regulatory affairs for Playtech, said that the company’s model uses more than 70 indicators using player anonymized data to spot troubling trends, but added that there is still a human on the other side looking at the data.
“What it’s showing you is that I’m looking at not only the fact that an individual played at night, I'm looking at whether that individual is playing later and later into the night, but that, in itself, might not be enough to trigger something,” she said.
“In combination with that, data might show you that they're fluctuating their type of gameplay, moving from casino to sports betting, for instance, or they're changing their type of payment methods, so there's a lot that comes together, and then there's the individual behind it that is seeing that data.”
Nick Imperillo, senior manager of risk services for GeoComply, added that another benefit of AI is lowering the technological barrier for people in different fields to enter the gaming and technology space.
"I think as we evolve as an industry and continue to grow, we need people with very diverse backgrounds and very specialized skills to increase those consumer protections, and AI has just become that extra tool in the toolkit to be able to allow us to meet those people, to bring them in,” he said.
“And it's been a great benefit to just to see people that, traditionally, maybe have no sports background, or no coding background, you know, we're bringing really, really spark people into our space, and that's really important again, for consumer protection.”
The panel also noted that the SAFE Bet Act, which was introduced last week in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, includes restrictions against the use of artificial intelligence in sports betting, including prohibiting using AI “to track the sports wagers of an individual.”
“If you are putting something out now, whether we like it or not, but you're putting it out with the intention of protecting players, and that shortsightedness and lack of understanding in the way of how AI can be utilized is a serious shortfall in a way,” Hogan said.
“The intention of customer protection, I think, always should be top of mind for everybody, but I think the bill unfortunately misses the mark on this and seems really misinformed,” Imperillo added. “It really, I think, undercuts hundreds of people that work tirelessly, day in and day out.”
