The Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow & Convention kicked off Monday afternoon with a discussion of artificial intelligence’s ramifications and how it will help the tribal gaming industry.
“It was very important to talk about (AI) and how we’re going to bring, I believe, a fundamental change in everything that we do,” said Conference Chairman Victor Rocha in launching the convention.
Missy Stanisz, senior director of product management at Everi, said many people have dabbled in AI, but haven’t seen the full potential of what it can do, especially in the gaming industry. “You’re not going to decide if AI is optional. It will never be optional. It’s going to happen, so we need to understand how it’ll change us and how we’ll change the world with it.”
Stanisz said AI will most impact the gaming sector’s property-experience optimization, marketing, the casino floor and online gaming, compliance, and anti-money laundering.
“From property-experience optimization, it’s a real-time journey,” Stanisz said. “Guests come in, do something on the gaming floor, and immediately get something in a text message and a push from the app and email. It’s starting to recognize and guide their experience in real time instead of waiting for the mailer that goes out seven days later. This makes that time period much more efficient and effective and more relevant to guests on the property.”
Stanisz called it a “personal concierge,” as the system learns what a particular guest likes, from play to restaurants, and creates a personalized service experience on the property. Team members can anticipate an arrival at the steakhouse with a drink that elevates the service.
An exciting prospect with AI already underway is game content that shows what games are or aren’t working on the floor on a faster basis, Stanisz said. That will help vendors design games to perform better on the floor and ensure casinos are optimizing every square inch. “Activating all the data, we’re seeing in all the silos can give us actionable insights, so we can respond and work in real-time to be better.”
As for marketing, staff can use AI to create images, make recommendations for campaigns, and speed up the whole process, Sanisz said. “You can use AI to test them fast on customers looking at social-media ads or responding to a monthly mailer,” Stanisz said. “Which of those would it predict would perform better?”
The whole idea is that it will help get out the right message at the right time through the right channel, Stanisz said. Casinos have a lot of hold ups these days, waiting for reports before they can take action. It can take days to go through them manually.
“This is still early stages on some level, but you’re really seeing this in online retail,” Stanisz said. “They are masters of this craft right now. This is a huge opportunity for gaming operators to tie together those systems and creates that experience for your guest and empower your marketing team to have the tools to move quickly in real-time to get this information out.”
One marketing benefit is how a casino can analyze a proposed prize drawing and project attendance and get feedback on revenue that’s generated and a return on investment, Stanisz said. “Where I really see the power of personalization is in the Midwest. One day of bad weather at the end of the month when you’re counting on revenue can make the whole month dicey. Imagine telling your AI system, ‘I need to make $50,000 on Friday night.’ You pick the list and promotion and send it out, instead of scrambling and reacting manually to these types of things.”
Stanisz said predictive analytics for new players will take time, particularly determining their revenue value and marketing bucket. “That’s going to take some testing. It’s not some plug-and-play thing, but being able to identify those people early on will be a huge advantage.”
In addition to the game mix on the floor and optimization, AI will help even more in the future with making sure the hold is right, and, if not, how to correct it in real-time, Stanisz said. The impact will be significant in online gaming by creating personalized games that fit players based on their history.
Another area that will continue to be an opportunity for the industry is responsible gaming, since there’s a lot of data on players. That data will identify warning signs early on and help correct those so people don’t harm themselves, she said.
AI will also help in analyzing fraud and cheating and predictive maintenance for gaming devices.
“It all sounds great and everyone has bought in and is ready to start tomorrow,” Stainsz jokingly said to the audience. “But there’s a lot to think about. We’re a highly regulated industry. Tribal gaming has data sovereignty and a lot of these systems are in the cloud and not on premises. Decisions have to be made about how tribes can manage their data in a way that feels comfortable and appropriate for them, while potentially figuring out where they’re willing to step into the AI space.”
There will be questions of who owns the data: What does the vendor own, how can it be used, who’s responsible for it, and how can it be maintained?
“A lot of questions will take a lot of conversations,” Stanisz said. “This won’t happen overnight, so the best time to get started is today, because there’s so much to figure out and it’s not going away. We want to make sure we’re shaping it and not allowing it to shape us. And we want to make sure we are with it every step of the way.”
