Artificial intelligence can fight fraud and detect problem gamblers.

As artificial intelligence finds its way into all kinds of businesses, it uncovers new, innovative means to cut costs, enhance controls, and boost marketing. From finding new drugs, protecting crops, and predicting wildfires, to warfare and emission control, AI appears to be everywhere these days. Unsurprisingly, AI has even been adopted by the UK’s gambling industry to garner a host of benefits. (Analytics Insight)

Physical casinos – AI to cool off obsessive betters

In November, news broke that the UK’s Betting and Gaming Council would deploy an AI software called the ‘Anonymous Player Awareness System,’ or APAS. It identifies gamblers betting too hard, or erratically, and then locks them out of the machine for 30 seconds. During the enforced short break, they will be served messages on the screen of the machine advising safer betting.

Also, APAS will alert staff at the casino that a machine has locked out. The staff can then engage the players in conversations emphasizing safe gambling.

Online casinos find multiple payoffs from AI

AI has proved to be somewhat of a boon for UK’s online casinos. They can easily incorporate AI software on their gambling websites and boost their safety and business prospects.

• Better customer service. AI-powered chatbots can boost customer satisfaction and improve business. They can be programmed to answer the most common inquiries and solve many problems independently. They can also add newly learned questions and answers to the database. Being non-human, AI chatbots are available 24/7 to respond to customers.
• Easier customer sign-up process. AI can simplify automatic account approvals and KYC, resulting in faster onboarding of new customers onto the gambling platform. The process weeds out fake players and makes the platform a safer place for genuine customers.
• Prevention of fraud. AI software can quickly detect players using unfair means of play. In fact, many such players have become sophisticated enough to use AI in their own betting such as for calculating the odds of any hand or for spotting the best winning combination. This queers the pitch for other players. However, the casino can use AI to spot their patterns and block them.
• Customizing the website experience. AI can be trained to recognize patterns in players’ data such as the time spent on the site, the games played, their most visited games, and their usual time of visit. Once the AI knows all this, it can greet the customer with their favorite slots or most entertaining games at long-on. The advantage: the customers no longer have to hunt for the games of their choice from a bewildering array of options.

Regulatory compliance

Furthermore, in the UK gambling regulations are strict and casino operators must maintain expensive regulatory compliance infrastructures to comply.

Therefore, casinos must prevent addiction to gambling. Similar to the APAS system discussed above, online casinos can use AI to detect and block, or terminate the accounts of addictive players.

Gambling company Kindred Group, The City University London, and gambling analytics company BetBuddy have a developed a system called PS-EDS (Player Safety Early Detection System). It collects and analyses player gambling data to identify gambling problems. An early version of the system has reported problematic gambling behavior with 87% accuracy, according to OnlineBingo.co.uk.

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