The pair of industry giants want to eliminate in-game toxicity.
Riot Games and Ubisoft have announced the launch of their joint research project “Zero Harm in Comms” to detect and fight toxic and disruptive behavior in online games on their respective blogs Ubisoft News and Riot Games’ Blog.
The project is a technical partnership between Riot and Ubisoft to build a shared database of anonymized data (a type of data that keeps its source private), and use the collected data for AI training to detect and suppress disruptive behavior. The idea was made possible thanks to Wesley Kerr, head of tech research at Riot Games, and Yves Jacquier, executive director of Ubisoft La Forge, the company’s research division. Both companies are very interested in pushing the boundaries of AI solutions, and want to create something that will benefit the entire industry, not just the two companies involved.
”This project is just an example of the wider commitment and work that we’re doing across Riot to develop systems that create healthy, safe, and inclusive interactions with our games.” — Wesley Kerr, Riot Games
Ubisoft and Riot Games are both members of Fair Play Alliance, a global coalition of gaming companies and professionals aimed at encouraging healthy player communication. That’s why director Yves Jacquier believes they’re setting the ground for a daunting task that requires worldwide industry cooperation, in addition to the feedback of the player community at large. Wesley Kerr adds that the Key to this AI solution is the amount of data they would gather and fine-tune, and that’s why getting more data would help in the long run to identify key disruptive words and actions shared across all video games and online interactions.
The Zero Harm in Comms project is still in its early stages and has been in the works for roughly six months now. Although still in its infancy, both companies intend to share the learnings of their early experiments across the industry next year, whatever the outcome. Interested players can check out Riot’s approach to player dynamics for more details about their work process, in addition to Ubisoft La Forge’s extensive report on AI learning and video game innovation.
