Gaming operators are able to enhance their slot offerings in ways never before possible
Artificial intelligence (AI) is making it easier for businesses to collect and interpret data, which is fundamental to achieving better results. While some industries have the ability to analyze data more easily, the casino industry, which is, in many ways, passive, has not had the same luxury. However, AI allows casino operators to improve their activity in many ways, and one of these is their slot machine segment.
There is a lot of information that can be gleaned from slot machine use, but much of it isn’t easy to collect. AI bridges that gap and has already found a place in both physical and online casinos to make improvements. One company specializing in AI technology is nQube Data Science, whose CEO, Jason Fiege, explained recently, “You have treasure troves of extraordinarily granular data right down to transactions on the slot floor. AI takes huge, messy data sets and makes sense of them. We all have an internal model of the world around us and we use it to make decisions; that’s how we survive. Giving computers the ability to do that is really the next frontier in AI. AI can help tremendously in understanding what the data actually means. We’re not trying to replace slot managers and operators; we’re trying to enhance intuition and push things in the right direction.”
The data helps understand player behavior better, how long most gamblers interact with the machines, what new options would be welcome by users and much more. Adds Fiege, “One of the key things we do is model the slot floor as a whole—I’m not looking at individual machines and saying, ‘This one did well, so we’re going to add more of that and this one didn’t do well, so I’m going to get rid of it.’ We’re building an entire model of the slot floor, fitting it to the data and allowing AI to actually learn how the dynamics of a slot floor actually work. When you‘re doing this, you’re taking into account cannibalization between difference slot categories, product placement on the floor.” The end result is an enhanced user experience that benefits both the consumer and the casino.