Ubisoft And Riot Are Teaming Up To Create Tools For Player Toxicity

Ubisoft and Riot Games are launch­ing Zero Harm in Comms, a research project focused on AI-based solu­tions to tox­ic play­er inter­ac­tions dur­ing mul­ti­play­er games.

The pro­gram’s goal is to expand the abil­i­ties of their AI tech to stop hos­tile, big­ot­ed, or neg­a­tive inter­ac­tions between users. It’s attempt­ing to build a cross-indus­try data­base and label­ing sys­tem, which will then be used to train AI mod­er­a­tion tools to pre­emp­tive­ly find and halt bad behav­ior. Accord­ing to Ubisoft­’s press release, this play­er data will be anonymized as part of the pro­gram effort to ensure pri­va­cy, while con­duct­ing its research ethically.

This project was cre­at­ed by Yves Jacquier, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Ubisoft La Forge, and Wes­ley Kerr, head of tech­nol­o­gy research at Riot. Jacquier stat­ed in a press release that “We believe that, by com­ing togeth­er as an indus­try, we will be able to tack­le this issue more effec­tive­ly.” Kerr men­tioned the pro­jec­t’s poten­tial out­side the gam­ing world say­ing, “Dis­rup­tive behav­ior isn’t a prob­lem that is unique to games — every com­pa­ny that has an online social plat­form is work­ing to address this chal­leng­ing space.”

Riot’s cat­a­log of mul­ti­play­er titles and Ubisoft­’s pletho­ra of games will cre­ate a wide range of cas­es for their research. Of course, the AI can­not stop every sin­gle case of bad behav­ior, but, in the­o­ry, the tech will be able to detect more issues with a high­er suc­cess rate. This is the first half of the ongo­ing research project, which start­ed around 6 months ago. What­ev­er the out­come, Ubisoft and Riot plan on shar­ing the results of this first phase with the rest of the indus­try next year.

Both Ubisoft and Riot have gone through their own accu­sa­tions of tox­ic and mis­man­aged work­places. Ear­li­er this year, Riot agreed to $100 mil­lion set­tle­ment in a gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion case.