Activision announced their next effort in combating toxicity in Call of Duty voice chats. According to the blog post, Activision will begin moderating voice chats using AI technology starting November 10th, thanks to recent partnership with Boston-based company Modulate.
Modulate will integrate ToxMod, their AI-powered voice chat moderation technology with Call of Duty‘s current moderation systems to “identify in real-time and enforce against toxic speech—including hate speech, discriminatory language, harassment and more.”
A beta to test out the new technology began yesterday August 30th for North America for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Warzone. Eventually, the technology will be released globally alongside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on November 10th. Additional languages other than English will be added at an undisclosed date.
According to their website, Modulate’s mission seeks to elevate the health and safety of online communities and create healthier experiences for everyone using its technology. Mike Pappas, CEO at Modulate and Michael Vance, Chief Technology Officer, Activision both expressed their excitement at their companies’ partnership.
“We’re enormously excited to team with Activision to push forward the cutting edge of trust and safety,” said Pappas. “This is a big step forward in supporting a player community the size and scale of Call of Duty, and further reinforces Activision’s ongoing commitment to lead in this effort.”
“…With this collaboration, we are now bringing Modulate’s state-of-the-art machine learning technology that can scale in real-time for a global level of enforcement,” said Vance. “This is a critical step forward to creating and maintaining a fun, fair and welcoming experience for all players.”
Activision and Modulate haven’t given a detailed explanation on how the technology works, but a recent FAQ gave players a small amount of insight on what they could expect. The system will only enforce the existing Call of Duty Code of Conduct and players who wish to opt-out of voice moderation will have disable the in-game chat in the settings menu.
With Modulate’s technology set in stone with Activision, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume it could be implemented in Xbox systems in the future. Microsoft is currently undergoing it’s own initiative to combat toxicity within its community, and if the Activision Blizzard acquisition goes through it will be only a matter of time.