The system monitors players’ public social media profiles.
According to The Guardian, the All England Lawn Tennis Club has deployed artificial intelligence for the first time to protect Wimbledon players from online harassment. The program uses AI to monitor players’ publicly available social media accounts and highlight racist, sexist and death threat comments in 35 languages.
High-profile athletes, including former US Open champion Emma Raducanu and four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka, have previously spoken out about the abuse they have received online, leading them to delete Instagram and Twitter (now known as X) from their phones as a result. Britain’s number two Harriet Dart has also said she only uses social media occasionally due to the prevalence of “hate” online.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club is using AI to create a safer online environment for all players.
“I think there are a lot of positives to take from this win,” Dart told the Guardian after her win over British number one Katie Boulter. [social media]but there’s also a lot of negativity. If I open one of the apps today, I’m going to get a lot of hate, regardless of whether I win or lose.”
Tournament director Jamie Baker said Wimbledon had deployed social media monitoring service Threat Matrix, developed by AI company Signify Group, which will also be rolled out to the US Open.
“This is not something that’s out in the public eye. You won’t see us screaming about this, but we’re basically scrolling through social media for all kinds of content, so we’re getting information that we didn’t have before,” Baker said.
“We’re not just going to rely on players to tell us what happened to them, but if there’s anything that raises concerns, then essentially our security team will step in and actually help address that.”
