Call of Duty has been prone to toxicity and many players have fallen victim to it. To counter in-game toxicity, Activision is collaborating with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), to develop and train an AI. This information initially popped up on the official Caltech website through a press release.
According to the press release, Anima Anandkumar and Michael Alvarez will be leading this research at Caltech. Toxicity and trolling in video games are huge issues that have existed for a long time and this solution might suppress it by a little bit.
Caltech and Activision’s collaboration to suppress toxicity in Call of Duty
Dealing with toxicity online is not an easy task and requires a lot of labor to hand-pick offenders. Thus, Activision is teaming up with Caltech to fight this issue. This project is going to be a two-year-long research to understand toxic behavior online and assist Activision’s moderation team to penalize offenders. The two Caltech researchers will be focusing on their respective fields to effectively pull this off.
Anima Anandkumar specializes in computing and mathematical sciences and helped study coronavirus. Additionally have also helped develop artificial intelligence to fly drones. On the other hand, Michael Alvarez is a professor of political and computational social science and has used machine learning political trends on social media.
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Michael Vance, Activision’s Chief Technology Officer said the following, “Our teams continue to make great progress in combating disruptive behavior, and we also want to look much further down the road. This collaboration will allow us to build upon our existing work and explore the frontier of research in this area.”
Overall the attitude toward this research is positive from Activision’s end. However, only time can say whether this attempt to curb toxicity would be effective or not. Also, it cannot be said for sure whether this technology will show up in the current Call of Duty title.
