DraftKings Is Using AI to Supercharge the Harms of Online Behavioral Advertising
DraftKings is using AI to identify and target customers most likely to lose money and respond to gambling promotions, according to reporting cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF uses the case to renew its call for a broad ban on behavioral advertising.
Why this matters: DraftKings is not just showing you ads. It is using AI to find people who are most likely to lose and then pushing them harder. That is behavioral advertising at its worst: the more a platform knows about your psychology, the more precisely it can work against your interests. Gambling companies already have access to your betting history, your losses, and your patterns. Giving that data to an AI model and using it to optimize promotions is a different kind of harm than a generic ad. The people most vulnerable to gambling addiction are the ones most likely to be in the crosshairs.
Who should care: General readers · AI governance · Policy
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