QCI, which debuted the addition of generative artificial intelligence to its Enterprise Platform in October, soon will unveil an update that provides detailed answers to questions as basic as “How can my casino make more money?”
The capabilities of what the company calls AGI 56.1 will be just one highlight of QCI’s display at the Indian Gaming Tradeshow and Convention from March 30 through April 2 at the San Diego (Calif.) Convention Center.
The QCI booth, No. 2735, also will spotlight how its recently announced strategic partnership will enable the streaming of live on-site performances, as well as behind-the-scenes productions, to TV monitors and personal devices throughout a property.
In addition, QCI co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Andrew Cardno said the company will seek “early adopters” of products from its agentic development team. Agentic coding refers to human-written programs that enable AI agents to understand a specific goal, determine the steps to accomplish it, and take action to meet it.
“This space is moving so fast. Every month is like a tech year,” Cardno said. “We’ve been very ambitious,” including the development of a “comprehensive” AI application for improving casino hotel operations. “(The IGA display) isn’t going to be a question of ‘What do you want us to build?’ It’s going to be a question of ‘Which pieces do you want us to bring to market first?’”
Cardno said the fast-growing capabilities of artificial intelligence can transform casinos into entertainment complexes that appeal to an even larger market. Some operators have determined that entertainment events have overtaken free play as the best way to attract people, he said. That led to QCI’s agreement with Itibari, Waynne & Partners, a California-based entertainment financing company with its own Studio Network, to bring live entertainment streaming access to casinos.
“Think about it,” Cardno said. “(Casinos) have all these events, all this talent, all this production, and it’s not streamed. We don’t want to be a streaming platform, but we found a great one that wants to work with us. … (Streaming) adds to the experience, and we’re going to be the ones to bring it to the industry.”
He said access to streaming a live event could be geofenced so viewers would have to be on-property to see it. QCI already has tested a concert stream at one casino, and a second is planned for early March. Cardno said the streaming ability will benefit small and large properties, noting that one interested operator has only 300 slot machines and a venue that seats about 200 people.
Likewise, the AI 56.1 update improves performance for all sizes of gaming floors, he said. “A larger organization might have a dedicated team of people building things for them. And a smaller organization doesn’t have the same resources, but they do tend to have the same kind of creative minds. Now they can do things that before only large properties could. (AI) opens the door to everyone. It’s a democratization of the computational capacity of the world. Now, everybody can have it, and we’re at the forefront of that.”
Cardno said tribal operators are at the center of QCI’s innovation efforts. For example, he said that because each tribe is a sovereign nation, operators wanted their data stored in servers on their lands as opposed to an all-in-one cloud server located beyond their physical control. That led to what Cardno calls “distributed servers,” which function like a cloud but are physically on tribal land. “That resulted in our entire technology stack being specialized to ensure sovereignty is protected,” Cardno said. “Now, many commercial organizations are saying the same. They want to own their own data. They want control over it. It’s a massive sea change. It’s like the entire industry of tech went one direction with the cloud, but because of sovereign nations, we went the other.”
QCI boasts of continuous updates to its Enterprise Platform, with more than 1,000 features added in the past 12 months, and Cardno teased more new developments before IGA.
“We’re not done yet,” he said.
