The British Esports Association is working with several tech companies to enhance the element of security and safety of children on its platform. The association is scheduled to launch the platform in spring 2021 initially for 12-19 year olds, which will ensure all users are verified at the point of entry and that communication within the platform is reviewed to reduce toxicity and cyber threats.
The association will deploy IBM Watson products to enhance the user experience, safety and wellbeing of young gamers. While the use of IBM Watson Assistant will engage gamers via a virtual assistant in the form of a gaming avatar. The assistant will also utilise IBM Watson Discovery to provide personalised content to enable the gamer to improve their skills, compete in tournaments and find the latest video from their favourite influencer.
It has also teamed up with safety technology provider GoBubble for real-time content moderation and will deliver accurate age verification using privacy preserving AI technology from Yoti to ensure age appropriate interactions.
The British Esports has also consulted with the NSPCC to ensure there are strong and consistent safeguarding procedures in the association.
Finally, British Esports, GoBubble and Yoti have been invited to test the platform within the Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO) Sandbox. This is a service developed by the ICO to support organisations that are creating products and services which utilise personal data in innovative and safe ways.
The project partners will also explore how Red Hat OpenShift can enable the platform to scale to a global market and even potentially beyond the world of esports. The intention is to containerise the platform, enabling it to be deployed directly onto the cloud infrastructures of other esports bodies and potentially to any organisation that runs a digital community.
Yoti is the world’s leading identity platform with accurate age estimation technology providing a secure way of proving ages, without revealing any personal information. There’s no need for ID documents and images are deleted after the age check. The free Yoti app also enables people to prove their age with one tap, which is verified with a government ID and their unique facial biometrics. Yoti’s combination of AI technology, liveness anti-spoofing and ID document checks ensures businesses can be confident in the age of their customers.
GoBubble’s child-centred ecosystem helps developers safely scale and reduce the risk of children being exposed to anything inappropriate. GoBubbleWrap, GoBubble’s content moderation SaaS API, will be utilised to provide real-time text moderation across the platform to reduce toxicity and steer gamers towards more positive behaviour.
This creates an attractive proposition for parents and teachers looking for a safer space for their children and student gamers to play together.
Chester King, British Esports Association CEO and founder, commented “Over the past few years we’ve worked hard to build a community of esports fans from schools and colleges across the UK. What’s been clear through feedback from parents and teachers is the need to ensure that young people know who they are playing and communicating with, and that where communication takes place, we must work hard to reduce toxicity in all its forms.
