Online abuse targeting footballers to be tackled by ‘world first’ AI software

We live in an age of rampant online abuse, a modern-day world in which people can anonymously spread derogatory, harmful and offensive language and its receiver can do little apart from calling it out or calling the police.

In the sporting sphere this is a regular occurrence, so much so that Liverpool in January became the first Premier League club to hire a mental health consultant tasked specifically with protecting young players from the trauma of online trolling.

Tracking a troll can be next to impossible, especially when social media companies do little to weed out the malicious content being spread on their platforms.

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Frustrated sporting bodies have tried to force action; last year the world of English professional football united for an unprecedented four-day social media boycott to protest at the continued abuse and racism aimed at players.

So Australian football has taken matters into its own hands, with the A-Leagues and players’ union announcing they will – in what they say is a sporting world first – use new artificial intelligence software which acts as a filter to stop racist, homophobic, sexist and other harmful comments from ever being seen by the players and their copious followers.

The automated machine-learning technology, created by British company GoBubble, will monitor the social media accounts of every A-League Men and A-League Women player and act as a filter for offensive content including words, images and emojis. The content will be identified and blocked to the player and their followers. While it will still be visible to the sender’s followers, the objective is to strip them of their intended