Editor's Letter

AI. It ain't going away, is it?
Its use within the gambling industry is increasing ever-more, so too its frequency in every-day use across all facets of life.
 Is this necessarily a good thing? From an effiency point of view, 100%. From a moral point of view? That's a different story – and, luckily for me, not one I really have to answer in this edition's cover feature. This being a B2B gambling magazine, we aren't too interested in whether AI will take over the world just yet. If you're a movie buff, you're probably already convinced it will, anyway.
 In said cover feature, I present my initial thesis to OPTX's Steve Bright, while also including contributions from Sportradar's recent White Paper on the topic, essentially questioning whether AI might cause businesses a few problems before the gambling industry can truly reap the rewards of its advantages. The technical term I use for this is "deskilling." The layman's term is downright laziness. For, if workers now have AI programs that can do their job for them, what is to stop them from doing nothing beyond letting AI do their work for them? We've seen such examples, even here...
 It's a complicated topic and one our contributors cover well. AI is also the subject of our Roundtable, while a number of our regular columnists are out in force through the body of the magazine, tackling the industry's hottest topics as always.
 You'll see below we have dedicated special mention to Johnny Aitken and Anton Yakovenko. It has to be said these are for two very different reasons. Aitken is a key figure in our spread on page 28 – a timeline of PointsBet's US operations. Despite seemingly making a lot of progress in North America (and spending heavily on marketing), the operator recently announced a strategic review with a view to potentially selling its US operations, reflecting just how tough it is for brands to actually break into the market Stateside. Yakovenko, meanwhile, has made a successful transition to the US – thanks to the support from his employer Eclipse Gaming that allowed him to leave war-torn Ukraine. During a time of negative headlines, especially in Ukraine, his is a heartwarming story we can all do with – and its our pleasure to bring you some real human news in this issue; separate, of course, to our traditional blend of data, business insight, and online product and casino floor discussion.