AI to be Utilized in ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’ to Combat Toxic Voice Chats
Activision has announced a new partnership with Modulate, a technology company focused on identifying toxic speech and hatred, to enhance direct voice chat moderation in Call of Duty. This collaboration aims to minimize the negative aspects of online gaming, while still fostering enjoyment and teamwork among players worldwide.
Modulate’s artificial intelligence system, ToxMod, attempts to identify threats such as hate speech, radicalization and self-harm in real time. It claims to work in three steps: triage, analyze and escalate. ToxMod listens to all audio conversations and scores that require further review. This tagged data is stored on their servers, while all other data is processed directly on the original device. The company says it then evaluates everything from tone to emotion by analyzing not only “what’s being said, but how it’s being said and how other players are reacting to it.” Finally, it tries to alert moderators to the most toxic cases, leaving it up to them to take action. The company claims it’s “the only native audio moderation solution currently available” that has protected “tens of millions of players.”
Integrating ToxMod could help prevent toxic responses as a whole by working alongside existing text-centric and reporting systems. “Combating particularly disruptive voice chat has long been an extraordinary challenge in gaming,” Activision chief technology officer Michael Vance said in a statement. “Through this collaboration, we now bring Modulate’s cutting-edge machine learning technology that can scale in real-time to achieve global implementation. This is a critical step toward creating and maintaining a fun, fair, and inviting experience for all players.” Last year, Activision began allowing game moderation teams to mute players using toxic language in voice-overs. and in text conversations.
ToxMod is now available in English beta in North America for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Warzone. It will be released globally – excluding Asia – when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III launches on the 10th. November.
