Gaming conferences are a mix of panel discussions, carefully branded backdrops, speed-dating-style meetings, and people politely pretending they remember where they met each other last year.
If we’re being honest, responsible gaming is not usually the topic that produces the most colorful interviews at a conference. But it turns out that if you put an Irishman in a flat cap on a park bench in New York City and ask him about artificial intelligence and gambling behavior, the conversation gets interesting very quickly.
This was one of those conversations.
Stephen Aupy, originally from Ireland and now based in London, was in New York for NEXT.io representing Mindway AI. The company focuses on helping gaming operators recognize the early signs of risky gambling behavior.
It’s a challenge the industry has wrestled with for years. Everyone agrees responsible gaming matters, but the practical question has always been how operators can realistically identify problematic behavior early enough to intervene.
We all know AI can do some incredible things at this point, but I’ve developed a bit of a knee-jerk reaction whenever someone says their company is an “AI-powered solution.”
So I asked the question we’re all thinking: “Okay, but how does your AI company actually differ from the others out there?”
Aupy allowed a brief smile to break through before settling back into his usual composure. He was ready for this one.
“The difference is that what we do is grounded in clinical psychology,” he explained. “The system is based on research from our founder, Professor of Neuroscience Kim Mouridsen, who spent years studying how gambling addiction develops.”
That foundation shapes how Mindway AI approaches the responsible-gaming challenge. Many industry monitoring systems focus primarily on financial indicators, such as sudden deposit spikes, large losses, or abrupt changes in spending patterns. Those signals can be helpful, but they often appear after the situation has already escalated.
Mindway’s technology instead focuses on what happens during gameplay itself and detects problematic behavior early when the problem is most treatable.
Gambling, after all, is a game.
Players extend sessions. They increase the frequency of their wagers. They begin chasing losses or gradually take risks they previously avoided. These behavioral shifts can develop slowly and often show up long before financial red flags appear.
“AI allows us to analyze large volumes of behavioral data and detect patterns that suggest a potential shift toward risky play,” Aupy said. “The goal is to identify those signals early to allow for a personalized and impactful intervention to sustain that person.”
For operators managing hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of players, recognizing those subtle patterns manually is nearly impossible. Artificial intelligence can process enormous volumes of gameplay data and identify behavioral signals that humans would struggle to detect at scale.
“In many cases, the amount someone spends isn’t the most important indicator,” Aupy said. “It’s how their behavior changes.”
The system evaluates several gameplay markers, including session length, wagering frequency, and shifts in betting patterns over time. Individually, these signals might not raise alarms, but when analyzed together, they can reveal patterns associated with the first stages of gambling addiction.
That insight allows operators to respond quickly. In some cases, it might mean encouraging a player to take a break or consider setting limits. In others ,it could alert responsible-gaming teams to review activity more closely.
“It’s not about replacing human judgment,” Aupy said. “It’s about giving operators better information.”
Responsible gaming has become one of the most important conversations in the global gambling industry, as online and mobile gaming continue to expand. Regulators want stronger player-protection measures, operators want to maintain trust with their customers, and players themselves increasingly expect platforms to offer tools that help them stay in control.
The challenge has always been timing. By the time obvious warning signs appear, the situation may already be serious.
Mindway AI has begun working with a number of operators, including companies like PrizePicks, DraftKings, and Betr, as the industry looks for more sophisticated ways to understand player behavior at scale. The company first gained widespread attention several years ago when its technology was featured in the New York Times, a moment that helped introduce the approach to a much broader audience, particularly in the U.S.
Today the company works with operators in 65 global jurisdictions and has built a reputation around what many see as a more academically grounded approach to responsible-gaming technology. Rather than building a model purely from transactional data, Mindway’s system draws from clinical research into how addiction behaviors form and evolve over time.
According to Aupy, the strong response from operators comes from the company’s different starting point. “That psychology foundation is why we’ve seen strong results. We’re not just looking at numbers. We’re looking at behavior.”
As the conversation wrapped up, conference attendees crossed the park with their badges flapping over their shoulders in the wind as they mentally prepared for the final round of panels and meetings.
“The industry has made real progress in responsible gaming,” Aupy said. “But understanding behavior is where we can keep improving.”
