FIFA will expand the use of AI at the World Cup to reduce the amount of abusive messages that teams and players are exposed to on social media.
World football’s governing body introduced a social media protection service after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and has offered its moderation element for free to all football associations at the 2026 tournament, which starts next Thursday. The Football Association has not confirmed whether it is taking up the offer.
An increasing number of Premier League clubs are using AI to hide racist, homophobic and misogynist content from players on their social media channels. Tottenham, who condemned the “vile, dehumanising racism” aimed at defender Kevin Danso following his mistake against Brighton last season, are among them.
The technology filters abusive and offensive comments from 30,000 keywords on the social media channels of teams and players and hides them in under two seconds. The person who sent the abuse can still see their post, but is unaware it has been hidden and reported for further investigation. They can be banned from purchasing tickets to FIFA matches or from clubs. The AI works on Meta platforms, Facebook and Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Threads but not Elon Musk’s X, which has always allowed hidden comments to be viewed.
Spurs and their north London rivals Arsenal have partnered with AI platform Respondology, which also works with the Premier League’s No Room For Racism campaign, to address the amount of abusive comments on their channels. Respondology was formed in response to the barrage of racist and sexist abuse directed at Serena Williams after she posted a picture with her new baby on Facebook at the 2019 US Open. The company, which includes NFL teams, Nascar and commercial brands such as Boots and Marks & Spencer among its clients, moved into football after the England players Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho were racially abused for missing penalties in the Euro 2020 final.
Erik Swain, Respondology’s co-founder and CEO, said: “We estimate that we’ve removed 1.5bn hateful impressions from global football, and that’s probably a very low number. We’ve removed 15m racist and homophobic comments in global football, primarily in the Premier League. And if you think about how often every comment is seen and use a safe number of 100 that’s 1.5bn. And we’re talking about clubs that have 50m followers, athletes who have 1bn followers, so 100 is a low number.
“Our AI works on every language on Earth, including morse code and Klingon, which we tested. No joke. It understands cultural references and nuances. There can be 10 times the amount of hate, and there will be because it’s in the United States, and it can handle it. This is technology for good.”
Manchester United introduced a social media code of conduct in 2024 and Swain believes every Premier League club will follow suit in the next 12-24 months. He explained: “The way Arsenal think about it is: ‘You can criticise the team, you can be negative towards a player or a coach’ but they want to draw the line the same way they draw the line of what’s allowed inside the stadium. If you shout racist things inside the Emirates then you’re going to be taken out. We are that on the digital channels of Arsenal.”
Meta, X and other tech companies have not introduced their own moderation services because, says Swain: “Philosophically they don’t want to. They say they are platforms not publishers and what people say is up to them. So they built these third-party APIs, which allows companies like me, to plug into their APIs and do it for them.”
With 78 games being held in the US and sports betting now legal in the majority of states, the abuse of players on social media is expected to increase significantly during the World Cup. Swain said: “There is a mental health aspect too. What happened to Saka, Rashford and Sancho in Euro 2020 was horrible. This tech does protect a player’s mental health. They can go on the pitch and not have to think about getting ripped on social if they make a mistake.
“A lot of athletes don’t need it and a lot of athletes love it because they feel it protects their mental health. And the clubs want to protect their athletes’ mental health. The first thing a lot of players do after a game is clean up and then get on their phones to see the reaction. The bottom line is we have the technology to wipe the problem out, so let’s just do it.”
