The Role of Big Data & AI in Gambling

AI, Big Data & The Future of Gambling

• AI in Everyday Life
• How AI Shapes Your Casino Experience
• Personalised Experience
• Preventing Fraud
• AI and Responsible Gambling
• How AI Can Shape The Future Your Future Gambling Experience
• Better User Experience
• Game Design and Development
• Big Data, AI & Gambling: The Future Is Now

AI in Everyday Life

The possibilities of AI moved from the realm of science-fiction to mainstream consciousness with the release of ChatGPT on 30 November 2022. However, the truth is that AI was already an integral part of many our lives long before that date.

If you have ever scanned the “Recommended For You” sections on the likes of Netflix or Spotify, then you have encountered AI. It has also touched your life every time that you gave a voice command to a smart speaker, made an unusual banking transaction, or even when you saw an ad that appears to be tailor-made for you!

AI is almost everywhere we look and is almost certainly not going away any time soon! In fact, it is more likely that we see AI help to streamline more tasks and help businesses to improve the services that they deliver to their customers. So, what might that look like in the gambling industry? This is especially interesting when we consider the possibility that AI and data combined may even be able to predict players behaviour in the future!

How AI Shapes Your Casino Experience

The transformation of the gambling in the digital era is a notable example of how technology can almost completely reinvent an industry. Now, as with many internet-first businesses, gambling platforms generate incredible amounts of data – and it is this data that is the fuel that AI needs to have a positive impact on players experience. Here is a quick look at how AI has made your experience better.

Personalised Experience

Upon logging in to a modern online casino, the images and screens that greet you are not a random collection. Instead, your past behaviours and preferences have been used by AI to create a personalised dashboard that is tailored just for you, highlighting games that you that you have enjoyed in the past as well as suggesting games that you may enjoy.

Through learning from data collected in your previous sessions, AI is aware of what types of games you enjoy and can use this information to predict the types of games you may enjoy in the future. This ability to predict is made possible by not just your previous gaming sessions, but also those of others who share similar interests as you. The result is a personalised experience, with recommendations that feel almost tailor-made for you. For example, if you have shown a liking for Megaways slots in the past, you are likely to be reccomended the latest Megaways slot. Conversely, if you have demonstrated a complete contempt for leprechauns in the past, then it is highly unlikely that the AI is going to recommend an Irish themed slot to you!

Preventing Fraud

It is an unfortunate truth of the world we live in that fraud is an everyday occurrence, that directly or indirectly affects millions of people each year. This is especially true in industries such as gambling and banking where millions, if not billions, of pounds are circulated each and every day.

In the face of nefarious fraudulent activity, AI has proved to be a staunch defender becoming a guardian of players accounts. Thanks to the data and the learning that has come from it, AI is able to predict player behaviour in terms and quickly highlight transactions and actions that seem to be unusual and not in keeping with previous habits. By detecting this at an early stage, AI helps to keep players accounts, and their money, safe.

AI is also crucial in detecting activities where actors have affected the outcome of sporting events – match fixing. There have been numerous examples of match fixing over the years, from snooker players intentionally losing frames to tennis players losing service games. These players have often taken payment to do so from criminal gangs who will profit by betting on the event. AI is key to identifying these schemes.

By analysis past betting data, it can build knowledge of what patterns look normal and, crucially, those that don’t. If there are betting patterns that are such outliers that they warrant official investigation, these cases are passed on to the relevant authorities for action to be taken. It is not unfair to say that without the power of AI, many of these criminal schemes would never have been identified.

AI and Responsible Gambling

In a similar way that big data has helped AI to protect businesses and individuals from fraudulent activity, it has also become a key force in promoting responsible gambling. Thanks to the huge swathes of data that online casinos generate about users, AI is able to use predictive analysis to identify and highlight player behaviour that could potentially become problematic in the future. This allows operators to intervene at a much earlier stage, offering support before the activity has become harmful.

How AI Can Shape The Future Your Future Gambling Experience

We have already discussed how AI and big data have combined to produce predictive analyses of player behaviour to improve players gaming experience, protect against fraud and promote responsible gambling. Now, let’s take a look at how it may transform the gambling experience in the future.

Better User Experience

Going forward, AI is not only going to create new ways of doing things, but it can also improve greatly what is already in place. Take the much-maligned customer service chat bot as an example. At these moment the chat bots are often seem as being quite limited in their scope, with individuals often getting frustrated with their answers. What is there was a better way?

Large Language Models (LLM’s) such as ChatGPT and Gemini have shown how AI can improve that AI Chat experience exponentially. Should organisations be able to leverage the power of LLM’s to boost the performance of their customer service chat bots, sure that would alleviate a lot of the frustration for many, and also help resolve queries quicker faster, better, to let us spend our time doing things that we enjoy the most!

Game Design and Development

AI is not just a tool for customer service and protection, it is also a hugely powerful tool when it comes to technical advancements as well. AI is already being used to develop and design games, and this is something that we can expect to continue in the coming years.

While technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have produced some changes to console gaming, its impact in online gambling has been negligible thus far. However, this is likely to change in the coming years. VR and AR have the potential to bring a truly immersive, social, casino experience to any room, in any house, in any country, allowing anyone to access the casino experience that they want, when they want it.

Big Data, AI & Gambling: The Future Is Now

Although it may not seem like it, AI has already had a huge impact on your gambling experience. From in-play betting odds in sports to the screen that greats you after you log-in, AI’s fingerprints are everywhere.

There is no doubt that this has already improved the online casino experience for millions, and it is exciting to think about what developments there may be in the future. Considering how early AI is in its journey it is impossible to predict how far reaching the impact may be, but it should certainly be an interesting ride!