ICC successfully trials AI tool for eliminating social media abuse in women's game

The ICC has successfully trialed an AI tool to combat social media abuse in women’s cricket, deploying software to monitor social media platforms throughout the Women's T20 World Cup held in the UAE. The GoBubble app, developed specifically for this purpose, detects and removes abusive words, offensive comments, and spam content from bots.

This initiative marked one of the largest social media moderation trials in sports. ICC’s analysis revealed that nearly one-fifth of comments on players’ or teams’ social media accounts were harmful or bot-generated. Recognizing the negative mental impact of online abuse on athletes, ICC selected British software GoBubble, which leverages AI to monitor and manage ICC, players, and team social media accounts, identifying and removing offensive, sexist, and misogynistic comments.

During the Women’s T20 World Cup, the AI tool from GoBubble monitored 60 female players and eight team accounts, analyzing a total of 1,495,149 comments. Among these, 271,100 comments were flagged as abusive, covering issues like racism, sexism, and homophobia. The tool intercepted and neutralized these abusive comments as part of ICC’s mental health protection initiative.

GoBubble functions in two primary ways: it filters out offensive language in English and other languages to protect specific players and teams, and it scans for irrelevant advertisements and spam from bot accounts.