We are firmly in the age of AI. Or at the very least, we are in the age where we are told that, eventually, AI is going to impact every aspect of our lives. Mark Zuckerberg, whose company, Meta, has invested an estimated $1 trillion in AI infrastructure, underlined this point recently, releasing a long-worded mission statement, setting out where he believed AI would take us. Zuckerberg claimed that AI would take on job roles, but also act as wealth creators, freeing up our leisure time. A happy future, basically.
But whether or not you agree with the Facebook boss’s prognosis, it is arguable that not all jobs will be taken by AI, even some that look ripe to be disrupted. Consider the online casino croupier as an example. By online, we refer to those people employed to operate tables, wheels, dice, cards, etc., for live casino games that are accessed online. It’s a niche but robust sector of employment, and it’s a global one, too.
AI Avatars Could Become a Casino Staple
Nevertheless, this does seem like the perfect type of job to replace with AI avatars, as the setting is already virtual. Moreover, there are rumblings that some major casino companies are considering implementing it. But we can also take a contrarian approach and say that there is also a chance that this might not happen.
Why? Well, the first thing to say is that live dealer casino games are popular in the first place because they are played with real ‘human’ dealers. These types of games started rolling out in the 2010s, and it was considered a minor miracle that the console technology (allowing the placement and settlement of bets in real time) was fine-tuned to support them.
But the main draw for players is the authenticity of the live dealer games. You can play roulette, blackjack, or whatever game you like in a software-based format, receiving exactly the same odds as you would on a Las Vegas gaming table, but live dealer games bring the realism and authentic experience, and that includes the people dealing the cards and spinning the wheels.
Evolution Exec Says He Is Sticking with the Human Dealers
Now, before we are accused of using idle conjecture, consider that the same argument was used by Todd Haushalter. Who’s he? He is the Chief Product Officer of Evolution Gaming, which is the world’s largest supplier of those live dealer games, furnishing major brands like DraftKings Casino with live gaming solutions. Haushalter was fairly adamant that he believed in the authenticity delivered by human croupiers, and he stated that Evolution was ready to back that up. As a company that is said to control around two-thirds of the live dealer games worldwide, you have to consider the CPO’s words as important.
Of course, there is every chance that Haushalter is trying to hold back the inevitable. Maybe some B2B casino startup company wows everyone with AI dealers, and casino platforms rush out to work with them. But for now, the prevailing line of thought is that it took a lot of hard work to deliver the authentic casino experience online, and the major players in the business don’t want to mess with that formula.
