Artificial Intelligence Is Used To Protect Tennis Players From Online Violence

Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek. (Photo: Instagram @igaswiatek)

JAKARTA - Intelligence will be used by four tennis bodies to help protect their tennis players from violence in cyberspace.

The tennis bodies in question are the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), and the United States Tennis Association (USTA).

"This development reflects the commitment of international tennis agencies involved to protect and support athletes from mental trauma and potential threats of harassment and abuse in the real world," the organization said in a joint release.

ITF is the agency that houses amateur tennis, the WTA is the highest body to accommodate women's professionals, while USTA and AELTC are US Open and Wimbledon organizers.

These four organizations will later monitor, report, and help identify who is behind the threat to players via social media using Threat Matrix technology.

Monitoring of online violence will be carried out on social media X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. It will start as of January 1, 2024.

Threat Matrix is a technology that uses a combination of artificial intelligence and open source data (open-source).

This technology will operate in 35 languages. It will be tasked with providing rapid assessment of threats to personal security, warning social media platforms for abuse, and supporting law enforcement agencies in investigating serious cases.

"The technique is committed to supporting its athletes against online harassment. This breakthrough initiative will make a significant contribution," the agencies said.

Online violence has recently become rampant on tennis players due to the widespread online gambling. Tennis are usually the target of swearing at players who lose money.

Threat Matrix was previously used during a trial period in 2022. At that time this technology monitored more than 1.6 million public uploads on X and 19 thousand Instagram comments.

The comments were directed at 454 tennis players who were sampled. These tennis players competed in various professional tennis tournaments that year.

As a result, one of the four tennis players whose account was monitored was proven to have received an online curse. In total there were 546 tweets insulting athletes from 438 identified accounts.