Wimbledon uses AI to protect players after abuse reports

Players taking part in this year’s Wimbledon tournament are being protected from online abuse by new artificial intelligence technology.

Signify Group’s Threat Matrix service scans tournament player posts for threatening, racist, sexist, and other harmful content, then flags the results.

The All England Club’s decision comes after several top tennis players, including former US Open champion Emma Raducanu, said they had deleted social media apps due to online abuse.

Harriet Dart, currently the second most popular woman in the UK, has admitted that negative experiences on social media have affected her negatively and that she only uses it occasionally due to the “hate”.

“I think there are a lot of positives to it (social media), but also a lot of negatives. I’m sure that today, if I opened one of my apps, whether I won or not, I would have a lot of hate,” she said. Guardian reports.

Signify says Threat Matrix scans social media for data, processes it, and then hands it over for human review, at which point you can take action.

This will make it possible to identify and prosecute people sending inappropriate and threatening messages in 35 different languages.

“Gamers and their families need support and protection to prove, defend against, and report abuse,” the Threat Matrix website states.

“Threat Matrix offers such a service, removing the anonymity of its protagonists and ensuring that perpetrators of abuse do not go unpunished.”

The use of this technology was announced by Wimbledon director Jamie Baker, who stated that the technology would also be used at the US Open.

“You won’t hear us say it out loud, but we’re basically scouring social media for this type of content and it means we can get information that we didn’t have before,” he said.

“We don’t just rely on what a player can say about their experience, but also on the fact that if something disturbing comes up, that’s when our security team steps in and helps do something about it.”

He revealed that a more advanced version of the technology is also available that allows private messages to be scanned for disturbing content.

When an issue is detected, the person concerned is notified and appropriate further steps are taken in consultation with them.

“If we have something that we think is a concern or worth reporting, we will eventually engage the player and then we will take care of the next steps. The benefit of having that is that you have the ability to officially log what’s going on with the appropriate people there.”

“But we wouldn’t take any of these steps without actually engaging with the players and their teams to try to understand what was going on.”

World Rugby used the technology to identify and locate an Australian who sent threats to a referee and his wife on Facebook during the 2023 World Cup in France.

The person involved was subsequently charged with using a transportation service to send threats or harassment via online communications.

At the time of the criminal proceedings in April, World Rugby said it was taking steps to prevent them from taking part in future events.

Independent contacted Threat Matrix and the All England Club for additional information.