Viewpoints: Discussing the use of AI in the casino industry

Stephen Crystal, Founder and CEO,SCCG Management: Stephen A. Crystal has spent over 32 years in all aspects of the casino, gaming technology, iGaming, sports betting, esports & sports entertainment industries.He has served as an attorney representing public and private gaming companies, Las Vegas casino owner & gaming executive employing thousands of employees, and an investor and advisor on over $2bn of project finance, mergers and acquisitions in the casino, gaming technology, iGaming, sports betting, esports & sports entertainment verticals.

Eddie Hall, IT Auditor, NIGC: Eddie B. Hall III currently serves as an IT Auditor at the National Indian Gaming Commission. Hall’s duties include managing and adjusting the workload of IT audits in internal control, conducting IT vulnerability assessments and performing training to accommodate the needs of the agency staff and stakeholders.Hall has been an IT professional for over 10 years. During this time, he has led management of security operations center (SOC) IT projects, software development lifecycle (SDLC) projects, systems compliance and auditing.

Steve Bright, VP of Data Science, OPTX: Steve Bright leads OPTX’s Data Science team, which designs, develops, tests and monitors new Artificial Intelligence (AI) features for OPTX’s data modules. Prior to joining OPTX, Bright worked as a Data Scientist in many different industries, and has over 30 published papers in fields ranging from Experimental High Energy Physics to Pharmacovigilance (Drug Safety). He also has several years of experience applying Data Science to problems in the Gaming Industry, including Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to forecast and optimize slot floor performance.

Paolo Personeni, EVP, Managed Betting Services at Sportradar: Personeni joined Sportradar in April 2015 to head the company’s Managed Trading Services (MTS). Since late 2019, Personeni has since taken the responsibility to lead the new unit Managed Betting Services (MBS). Personeni has a diversified and rich professional background that includes three years in investment banking, 10 years as a partner at Bain&Co, and within various start-ups and turnarounds. He also spent seven years as an executive in gaming at GTech Lottomatica with responsibilities for the Italian AWP/VLT and Commercial Services business, the Italian distribution network, the global B2B online platform business and Global Strategy, Platforms and Projects functions.

How can the customer experience be improved with AI?

Stephen Crystal: In casino gaming, AI significantly enhances the customer experience by tailoring game content and marketing to individual preferences. Procedural content generation (PCG) driven by AI creates varied and engaging game elements, such as slot themes and configurations, enriching the casino floor with new and unique attractions.

Furthermore, AI-driven real-time analytics optimize the gaming experience by dynamically adjusting ga most appealing games. Personalized marketing campaigns, powered by AI, target individual player behaviors and preferences, increasing engagement and retention by delivering relevant promotions and incentives that resonate with each player.

Eddie Hall: Artificial Intelligence (AI) on gaming is providing innovations to Tribal gaming now. AI integration can impact cybersecurity, surveillance, casino back-office operations, marketing and customer-facing engagement.

Steve Bright: The best sort of enhancements to a customer’s experience that AI can provide are the ones that look like they were crafted and curated by hand. Ideally, the player does not need or want to know about the tens of thousands of lines of code behind the scenes, everything just works. In the gaming industry, this can mean things like giving players offers that are more in line with what they have shown by their behavior to be what they are truly interested in, such as the right events and right gifts.

It also means rewarding players at levels they feel good about. At OPTX, we also use AI to help casinos inform their slot floor (and soon table game) content. This means having the right mix and number of the most popular games, so that players can always find what they are looking for, and operators can make the optimal use of limited space and resources.

Paolo Personeni: Artificial Intelligence is instrumental in delivering personalized sports betting experiences to individual customers. The application of AI-driven personalisation tools allows operators to serve customers with content that is tailored to individual interests and preferences based on their betting history.

This is delivered on a granular level whereby customers receive details of a particular betting market or bet type. Today, Sportradar’s AI-driven personalisation capabilities allow clients to engineer a front-end experience for individual customers, displaying content that is relevant to them and reflective of their betting history. This creates an immersive experience for bettors and builds a 1-to-1 relationship between them and the operator.

Will the human element be lost with an increased use of AI?

Stephen Crystal: The adoption of AI in casinos enhances rather than replaces the human element. AI takes over repetitive tasks like data analysis and routine operations, allowing casino staff to focus on higher-level customer service roles, enhancing personal interaction and overall visitor satisfaction.

This strategic allocation of roles ensures that the human touch remains integral in customer relations and service, where personal engagement and direct interaction are irreplaceable by technology.

Eddie Hall: AI uses customer data to predict gaming patterns and enhance the customer experience by managing data from behavioral patterns of guests’ previous visits. With AI capturing data, some employees can be reassigned to interact with customers in real-time.

Steve Bright: Just the opposite, at OPTX we are finding that semi-manual processes of cutting and pasting from and to different file formats, and applying what can fairly be called guesswork to make decisions, can always be replaced to some degree by applying AI and automation.

This gives casino staff the time and head space to observe, evaluate and react to guests’ experiences in real time. There are always going be factors and qualitative data that our AI code base does have access to, but are readily apparent to anyone who takes the time to walk the floor, maybe a player’s favorite game was moved to noisy, cold, or even wet location.

And this is not just back-office workers that benefit, player-facing positions like casino hosts benefit as well. For example, a casino’s database may have a backlog of thousands of ‘forgotten’ players who have neither been visited nor been contacted in some time, and yet still have great potential value according to the OPTX Top Contacts Model.

Our clients have generated over $1.6m in incremental revenue just by chipping away at that mountain of forgotten players, and by making a habit of following AI recommendations.

Paolo Personeni: No, I don’t’ believe so. From a Sportradar perspective, our focus is on upskilling colleagues, so they know how to use the technology to create impact for our business and our clients. AI is really powerful when it assists humans in areas which require significant amounts of resource to complete a task, such as sports data collection.

Our approach is AI-assisted. We have teams working with AI to enhance their output, using the technology to generate more data or semi-automate some tasks to produce a better outcome for clients.

What ethical dilemmas do companies face in the implementationof AI?

Stephen Crystal: The use of AI in the gambling industry raises several ethical issues, particularly concerning privacy, fairness and responsible gambling. The extensive data collection required for AI and ML applications can intrude on privacy if not handled correctly. Compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA is crucial to ensuring that player data is used ethically and transparently.

Additionally, AI must be designed to promote responsible gambling, with systems in place to detect and mitigate problem gambling behaviors using AI-driven monitoring and intervention tools. Ensuring fairness also remains a critical concern, as AI systems must be transparent and free from biases that could unfairly influence game outcomes.

Eddie Hall: There are currently some challenges with implementing any AI solution. Regulatory oversight including legal and policy frameworks are constantly evaluated as the landscape matures. If the data algorithm has biases, the employed tool may generate discriminatory responses. Data privacy and protection concerns, social and cultural implications also exist. These concerns don’t outweigh the potential value of AI, but they cannot be ignored.

Steve Bright: A commonly voiced concern around the ethical usage in AI is that AI can reinforce existing biases and discrimination by being trained on datasets that are created under those same historical conditions. Since we control what data we use in training our models, we have made the decision to not include any sort of sensitive demographic data like ethnicity that is probably of very limited value for understanding and predicting player behavior anyway.

Another concern is data privacy. We don’t use any sort of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in any of our models. The idea is that the model can’t form biases around data that it does not have in the first place. Also, we use a cloud provider (MSFT Azure) that applies rigorous controls and processes around cybersecurity, and we spend a great deal of our time and energy thinking about data security best practices.#

Paolo Personeni: The biggest challenge for operators is having access to high-quality data – that’s fundamental to any AI initiative. Without data, operators can’t feed the algorithms, which ultimately means they won’t get anything meaningful out of the process. The diversity of that data is equally important. The golden rule is typically that the amount of data required, and the timeliness (real time data makes a difference more often than not) of that data, is more than 10 times the number of parameters included in the algorithm.

In sports betting, where the models need to account for an extremely high volume of factors, acquiring enough high-quality data is exceedingly difficult. Even for operators who have a sufficient internal database, they may still lack the variety necessary to cover the entire market in the same way a global provider can. And in many cases internal information would not be enough. Sometimes operators just face issues in acquiring, processing and storing information because of technical limitations presented by legacy technology.

What’s next for AI and the gaming industry?

Stephen Crystal: The future of AI in the gambling industry promises revolutionary changes, with new levels of game personalization, risk management and customer engagement. We expect to see more sophisticated AI-driven games and enhanced personalization that tailors the gaming experience to individual preferences. Innovations in AI will also improve security measures, such as advanced biometric authentication and fraud detection systems, making online platforms and casinos safer.

Moreover, AI’s ability to provide comprehensive real-time data analysis will continue to refine risk management and odds-making, ensuring more accurate and dynamic betting options. As AI and ML technologies evolve, their integration into casino gaming operations and online platforms will likely be accompanied by updated regulations, and ethical guidelines to address the challenges and maximize the benefits of these advancements.

Eddie Hall: As Tribal gaming pursues AI’s newest applications, they will be delving into a dynamic gaming landscape. Capitalizing on AI can bring an extraordinary Tribal gaming experience]Steve Bright: Increased adoption of AI-rich products like OPTX and increased automation in all aspects of gaming operations. It’s easy to imagine a near-future in which processes like campaign creation and implementation are both automated and optimized by AI.

I think any business function in gaming or hospitality that involves a person interacting with a computer, instead of with another person, can probably be made more efficient with AI or maybe even completely automated.

In the gaming business, AI is about making computers do the things computers are good at, like chewing through vast amounts of data and making recommendations, and letting people do the things people are good at, like managing relationships with your guests, and creatively curating the guest experience.

Paolo Personeni: We’ve already touched on the AI technology operators need to create a 1-to-1 betting experience for their customers, and we’re providing our clients with the integrations they requite to deliver a personalised front-end betting experience to each individual customer. Using AI to engineer a 1-to-1 betting experience across an entire betting website is a longer play, with a complete User Interface (UI) overhaul require

Today’s betting websites are similar in look and feel, so operators wanting to modernise their UI will need to be bold and look outside of the betting industry for inspiration. For example, social media and gaming platforms deliver a personalised user interface that can result in deeper engagement. We’re seeing some non-traditional UI integrations take place, with swipe functionality, so popular on dating applications, incorporated by a handful of operators to make the process of choosing a bet more straightforward for customers. 

David Thompson

Editor

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