AI is listening in on gamer chat for toxic and abusive language

Artificial intelligence is being used to detect harassment in verbal communications for gaming and VR platforms, but such AIs face challenges in keeping up with evolving forms of extreme speech

By Jeremy Hsu

AI has entered the gaming chat – and it’s listening for hate speech. Some of the worrld’s most popular games are now using artificial intelligence to detect verbal harassment or hate speech in some of the world’s most popular games.

The service, called ToxMod, uses multiple AIs to transcribe and analyse verbal conversations among gamers, flagging possible violations of community rules for the attention of human moderators. Developed by the company Modulate in Massachusetts, ToxMod is being tested by companies that operate games or …