Games have the power to connect people across the world in enjoyment and teamwork, but they can also create a space ripe for toxic speech and hatred. Activision is attempting to minimize the latter, announcing a new collaboration with Modulate, a company using technology to identify these issues, for direct voice chat moderation in Call of Duty. Modulate's AI system, ToxMod, attempts to identify threats like hate speech, radicalization and self-harm in real-time. It claims to work in three steps: triage, analyze and escalate. ToxMod listens to all voice chats and pinpoints which warrant a further look.

AI has entered the gaming chat – and it's listening for hate speech. Some of the worrld's most popular games are now using artificial intelligence to detect verbal harassment or hate speech in some of the world's most popular games. The service, called ToxMod, uses multiple AIs to transcribe and analyse verbal conversations among gamers, flagging possible violations of community rules for the attention of human moderators.

Modulate, a leader in the fight against online toxicity, announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round led by Lakestar with participation from existing investors Everblue Management, Hyperplane Ventures, and others. In addition, Mika Salmi, Managing Partner of Lakestar, will join Modulate's Board of Directors. The company will use the funds to expand its team and continue scaling its groundbreaking proactive voice moderation platform, ToxMod. "ToxMod is changing the way game developers attack toxic behavior in their communities and this funding is a real validation of our mission to make online communities safer," said Mike Pappas, CEO of Modulate. "We're thrilled to welcome Mika and his vast store of experience to the Board as we grow our team and ramp up the development and deployment of ToxMod."

In my previous column, I looked at the problem of artificial intelligences forcing hardware to consume too much power, which could lead to an unsustainable spike in demand at data centers in this country by 2025. To test out their appetites for more power, I employed several advanced artificial intelligences, and also their close cousins machine learning, cognitive computing, deep learning and advanced expert system technology. For that column, I only measured how much power they consumed, but my original intention was to actually test them out to show some innovative things the technology was accomplishing. I am circling back to that effort now. For many years we have been reporting on the technology of artificial intelligence, about how it's being built out and made more efficient, or how it can be paired with other technologies like quantum computing to become even more accurate.