8 Ways AI Is Changing The Gambling Industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most significant marks of technological advancement in the modern world. It has revolutionized the way people do things in several areas such as healthcare, the automotive industry, security, and even personal life through virtual assistants. In simple terms, AI involves programming machines to simulate human intelligence, making the programs imitate human actions and behavior. Machine Learning (ML) is a facet of AI that studies patterns of human behavior to adapt to new circumstances. AI has become more prominent in the gaming industry over the past few decades. It has progressively transformed leisure gaming and continues to do so with the emergence of new forms of technology. It enriches the experience of customers and keeps them coming back for more. Further, from a business perspective, automated systems that can apply AI and ML to gather information during human interaction. They can extract and understand familiar patterns of users before using algorithms to predict future outcomes with zero assistance from humans. Casinos and Online Gaming Platforms have, therefore, embraced AI massively since it was first launched in 1994 due to its unique ability to enhance human capabilities, which steers competition in the industry. The advent of AI is crucial now more than ever due to the shift from retail to online gaming, which calls for operators to deliver personalized front-ends for every individual player.

Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming CRMs

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The automation of customer support has been elevated to an entirely new level of smartness by AI. Operators collect data through gamer interactions with their platforms, which offers them an insight into the cues of the players. AI offers data that can help operators target their marketing towards interested and loyal clients, which is the primary goal of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The composition of the player profile is data-driven, and the whole process is personalized using the actions of the user. The same strategies that they use to identify problematic gamblers enable the gaming operators to relate with these individuals effectively. AI technology analyses the motivating factors leading the individual to play, adjust their gaming preferences, and even identify those who are not bound to quit after a few visits to determine their loyalty. Operators can also use it to predict player churn propensity, which is the likelihood that the player will stop and leave the gaming site. The operators collect information using a data mining algorithm and use it to identify potential churners early enough to put effort into retaining them. AI in online gaming is vital since it helps gaming operators to;

  • Come up with bet bonuses that are unique to the players’ needs. AI can enable operators to send personalized bonus offers to users based on their availability or the communication medium they use frequently.
  • Develop user interfaces that display to users’ games that they have expressed interest in rather than display numerous games for the player to sift through and even modifying the game design to appeal to their tastes.
  • Identify niche clients and develop personal loyalty programs that reward them with incentives or bonuses depending on their betting habits.
Casinos Use AI To Spot Cheaters and Frauds

Fraud Detection

Online gaming has become one of the highly lucrative online businesses, but this also exposes them to the risk of cheating. AI bridges the gap in the detection and stopping of cheaters who would otherwise cause losses to operators or other gamers. It can prevent fraud by determining already pre-existing cheating methods, and if it is used again, then it can thwart the attack at the earliest point. AI uses algorithms to identify any information that stands out from expected behaviors categorized as usual. The system can then report the anomalies since it translates the information to distinguish between a violation of predefined instructions and a genuine error. The complexity of online fraud due to the anonymity involved calls for an astringent and almost foolproof method that can only be actualized through AI. Between 2013 and 2017, the gaming operators registered a tenfold increase in the number of detected cases. This is a clear indication that AI has been very instrumental for gaming operators to identify cheats and their schemes more easily.

The casino industry utilizes AI on a large scale as it plays a crucial role in enriching gaming practices.

AI + Gambling Self-exclusion Programs

Responsible Gambling

Responsible gambling is a term synonymous with gambling sites and casinos. Although warnings about responsible betting are availed to gamers, some individuals may overtime slide into gambling addiction. The risk of irresponsible gambling is much more pronounced in the current era of online gaming, where smart gadgets have exceptional ease of access to the internet. Traditional monitoring happens in real-time since an individual’s habit can be observed easily. Still, with computers and smartphones, it is easy for them to avoid detection and, therefore, cannot be controlled. Although gambling lures people to try their luck for better bet outcomes, it is not the intention of the industry to create problematic gamblers. AI has, therefore, come up as a prominent and crucial method to control gambling addiction. Some of the trends analyzed using AI to confirm user risky traits include;

  • Time spent by a user gaming
  • The stakes-placed
  • The winning and losing trends
  • The amount of money they deposit and its frequency

AI is a disruptive technology that places all stakeholders in the gaming industry in a position to intervene and foil an onset of addiction or prevent it from reaching critical levels. The algorithms can pick out risk factors of individual players, monitor their progress, and determine the probability of the user getting addicted. AI systems can also generate pop-up messages to warn gamers about their gaming habits, exclude access to gaming sites after predetermined durations, and even limit the amount and frequency of deposits. Research indicates that when players receive personalized feedback on their gambling patterns, they are more likely to be responsible gamblers compared to those who do not. Therefore, operators must prevent irresponsible gambling patterns, which they can do by using AI to monitor individual gambling behavior.

AI Facial Recognition In Land-based Casinos

Facial Recognition

Facial recognition is an essential system that enhances security in the gaming industry. It goes a long way in fraud prevention. Operators in casinos can use facial-recognition software to identify and eliminate threats. It can also be used in online gaming to limit the time that children spend on gaming and prevent them from engaging in gambling activities. Another critical application of facial recognition is enhancing the gaming experience. Facial expressions carry a lot of informative data, and AI uses facial recognition technology to decipher the emotions based on observable physiological and behavioral features. It is a front-end component that should be integrated into the game engine to detect facial emotions through device cameras or webcams. To fully utilize AI capabilities, facial recognition should also have the ability to accommodate the facial emotions of multi-players in a single frame or shot. This can lead to advancements in fields like Virtual Reality gaming, where facial expressions can then be used to give feedback to players making the games interactive and thus entertaining.

AI has improved the business practices in gambling by offering gains like; Responsible Gambling, Targeted Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Fraud Detection, Natural Language Processing, and Facial Recognition.

Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Digital Marketing

Marketing

In online gambling, automated marketing offers providers with better coverage, accuracy, and efficiency. AI offers data that captures insights on gamer confidence, bet types, market factors, and bet limits that are used to profile gamers. It presents bookmakers with an entirely new model of target marketing that involves developing accurate and pinpoint messages meant to entice and retain clients. Marketing strategies used in online gambling have, therefore, evolved into hyper-segmentation since the availability of user data allows for personalization. Marketers now have a 3600 understanding of their players, and each interaction is predicted following the predetermined unique preferences. Communication for marketing is, therefore, driven by relevance, which translates to zero wastage since the message reaches the desired and willing target. It is a well-timed advance in this era of advertisement blocking where communication with consumers needs to occur through an emotionally intelligent approach. It also enables online gaming operators to offer competitive bet prices, which make their products more appealing to users.

AIUnlocks The True Power Of Analytics

Analytics

Analytics in online gaming works on a mechanism of matching the abilities of the player to the difficulty level in completing a task. In online gaming, AI collects a lot of data from consumers, which is the primary resource supplied to the machine learning algorithms. The gambling industry operates wholly on statistical probability, which reiterates the critical relevance of user data. AI establishes a process of systems learning and processing what is discovered about individual players known as personalization. A lot of data is scrutinized instantly, and the elimination of human analysts ensures that it is real-time and accurate. The system then ensures that the game is always entertaining by adjusting complexity to avoid boredom or frustration. The players’ game skills are analyzed to perk up the players’ motivation and keep them entertained. These are the critical determinants of attracting and maintaining clients, and the games present well balanced and doable challenges for smooth user experience. Users get to visit personalized user interfaces with unique odds and content that has been generated for them exclusively. Analytics work well for both online gaming and also for Electronic Gambling Machines (EGMs) at casinos. EGMs are the most used form of gaming in the industry, attracting more customers because they create an illusion of control. The player feels like they have control over the outcome of the game. AI can be used to identify patterns among players to understand their preferences and optimize the EGMs to suit the inclinations of players.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents an avenue for automated systems to optimize human experiences as they use various services.

AI’s Increasing Role In Customer Service

Customer Support

AI has transformed customer service. It enables a player to access customer support 24/7 and in a manner that is tailored to their needs. It also provides a seamless process that enhances the customer’s experience and increases customer engagement. Further, through ML, the system would have all the information on customer queries and have a database of frequently asked questions (FAQs), which then ensures that there is always a response to the questions that gamers ask. In this way, players have a better experience and develop loyalty to the operator.

Casinos Use Chatbots for Customers’ Interaction

Natural Language Processing

National Language Processing (NLP) an AI capability that combines both linguistics and computer science to create input and output for AI systems using human language. In gaming, NLP is used to enhance the user experience by allowing them to input text through the interface, which the system can then interpret automatically. In games involving enemies or partners or even storytelling, NLP aids in transmitting real-time dialogues. AI, through NLP, enables opinion mining by extracting human emotions through an analysis of natural language. It can then determine the polarity of the emotion in the text, either positive or negative. In gaming, the insights generated by the system are fed to the game scenario and replicated by the virtual characters. This improves gaming for either a single-player or multi-players by creating a virtual reality environment that mimics real-life interactions.

In January 2020, Las Vegas casino executives, analysts, lawyers and industry insiders met at the UNLV Boyd School of Law to discuss how AI could transform nearly every facet of the city’s casinos.