Blizzard Is Trying To Teach Computers To Spot Overwatch Jerks

Despite arriving too late to prevent what some might call a full-blown crisis, Overwatch's anti-toxicity efforts seem to be bearing fruit. The next step in the battle, says game director Jeff Kaplan, might be having computers, not humans, find the bad actors. "We've been experimenting with machine learning," Kaplan told me during an interview at Blizzard's offices yesterday. "We've been trying to teach our games what toxic language is, which is kinda fun. The thinking there is you don't have to wait for a report to determine that something's toxic. Our goal is to get it so you don't have to wait for a report to happen."