On today’s episode of iGaming Daily, supported by Optimove, Joe Streeter, Editor of CasinoBeats and SlotBeats, is joined by his SBC colleagues Kieran O’Connor and Ted Orme-Claye to discuss AI Appreciation Day and its relevance in finance, gaming and sports.
The trio start by discussing how they use the emerging tech in their daily lives, with all three agreeing that AI transcription services have made their jobs as journalists easier.
Kieran attended the Money 20/20 conference in Amsterdam last June and he explained that he had several conversations with people in the payments industry regarding how AI can be used to help fraud prevention and know-your-customer (KYC) practices.
On how this could translate to gaming, Ted added: “Betting companies have to handle a lot of data and a lot of customer information. Some of the biggest companies with multiple brands will have millions of customers across various countries.
“AI can be used to analyse all this data and keep an eye on customers. If you suddenly see that someone who just usually puts £10 on football at the weekend suddenly doubles it in a short space of time or they’re suddenly playing late at night, AI might be able to pick up on that.”
He also suggests that AI could be used to check for signs of “dodgy betting slips” or assess documents submitted by players for KYC purposes.
The recent European Championships have offered an opportunity to see how AI can be utilised in football through the implementation of semi-automated offside decisions.
The technology was first used by FIFA during the 2022 World Cup, and it has been found to cut the time taken to give an offside decision by 31 seconds.
Joe said: “I really noticed that at the Euros and in the final when that razor-tight call was made, it took about 20 seconds. That’s been a real bugbear of domestic VAR in the Premier League is that these calls are taking so long and the use of AI can remove that time constraint.”
Kieran added that AI is also being used as a scouting tool by clubs and refers to a feature that his fellow Insider Sport journalist, Callum Williams, did with AI.io.
The company has developed AI which can analyse videos of footballers doing drills for scouting purposes. Burnley FC was the first club to run with the technology and it has now been used by players from around 125 countries.
“It has allowed scouting networks to go to 125 different countries without actually going to 125 different countries,” explained Kieran. “There are a lot of kids out there from countries in Africa and South America who probably don’t get to see the light of day. So this is revolutionising how [teams] find this talent.”
To end the show the discussion turned to what some of the barriers are to using AI in gaming and finance.
Ted said: “Often the topic that comes up is responsibility. How can AI be developed responsibly without it becoming a risk to consumers and businesses? That is one that a lot of people are touching on.
“It’s something that a lot of governments have been getting involved in. If we’re going to relate it to UK politics, I think politicians on all sides have recognised how big financial services and technology are as a UK industry. So they want to see that developing bit they also want to see AI develop responsibly.”
