Rockstar has reportedly partnered with Modulate to help clean up the voice chat in GTA Online.
Online multiplayer games, like GTA Online, are infamous for the toxicity that some of their in-game servers, especially public ones, can contain. Profanity and negativity can litter both in-game chat and voice communications. It isn't unusual for players to flood the communications channels with spam. Now, with the help of AI, it appears that Rockstar is attempting to crack down more heavily on this behavior.
Unlike Activision Blizzard, which announced its move into AI-usage, Rockstar has "quietly" partnered with Modulate, the company that's behind its newest moderation system to "detect toxic speech" in the game.
The "AI-powered voice chat moderation tool" is called ToxMod and will help Rockstar in filtering bad behavior in GTA Online, including but not limited to, hate speech, harassment and discrimination, all in real time.
https://twitter.com/TezFunz2/status/1709162898193346633
ToxMod was exclusively added to GTA Online on the PC as part of its October 3 update, as noted by Tez2.
Without any clear information about how ToxMod will work in GTA Online, all we can do is speculate. But, Tez2 did stir some controversy by mentioning that the AI content moderation software can ban users from using voice chat. It isn't clear yet if it can and/or will ban users from accessing GTA Online entirely.
For now, it looks like a noteworthy tool that, hopefully, won't take action against players based on what's presumably a flawed dataset. We think that Rockstar should still rely on some human involvement to safeguard players. A common problem with using AI content moderation is its inability to discern hate speech from people's right to express themselves. It has also been shown that AI's speech recognition systems can discriminate against certain racial identities and accidents.
As for what the larger GTA Online community thinks of the latest update, most seem indifferent. Many accepted, a long time ago, that the in-game voice chat in GTA Online is hopeless. The chance of encountering severe toxicity in opening what should've been a useful communication channel isn't worth it.
We'll have to see if this attempt to combat toxicity in GTA Online will work.
Rockstar Games is currently giving away free copies of the GTA Trilogy remaster to GTA+ subscribers. Feel free to check out the latest content drop added to GTA Online as part of the September 28 update.
