Veikkaus sets out principles for AI in gambling

The Finnish state monopoly operator has published guidelines on the use of AI in its gambling products and marketing.

Finland.- The state monopoly operator Veikkaus has set out principles for its use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its gambling products and marketing.

The operator uses AI for digital marketing in order to generate audience recommendations and choose which advert or placement to display to a customer.

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AI is also used to operate a customer service chatbot, to calculate betting odds and and in several automatic notifications and processes.

Any use must now meet its guidelines on transparency, privacy, responsibility and customer focus.

All AI applications and machine learning models have their own manager to ensure algorithms comply with the guidelines, it said.

Veikkaus said it recognised the privacy issues around AI and said that it would ensure data protection through secure storage and processing of this data.

It stressed that its use of AI was aimed at providing a better gaming experience rather than for cross-selling or to alter the outcome of games.

It said: “The ethical principles of Veikkaus’ artificial intelligence cover both machine-learning artificial intelligence that learns independently from data and rule-based artificial intelligence that enables automation.

“We strive to provide a responsible gaming environment by identifying and responding to anomalous customer behaviour.”

This month, Veikkaus introduced mandatory virtual identity verification controls on its slots machines as it continues to step up responsible gambling measures. Players must log in with their phones in order to gamble.

The operator reopened its slots in Satakunta last weekend.