Indonesian minister to discuss online gambling eradication with Google

Jakarta (ANTARA) – Minister of Communication and Informatics Budi Arie Setiadi has said that he will meet with the representatives of technology giant Google to discuss online gambling eradication in Indonesia.

He informed that the meeting will discuss Google’s commitment to utilizing its technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI), to help eradicate online gambling in the digital space.

“As a form of their participation in government programs, they help us to eradicate online gambling by AI. We will meet tomorrow,” the minister said on Monday.

According to him, the use of AI to eradicate online gambling in Indonesia would be in accordance with Google’s focus, which, in the last one year, has developed a number of innovations in its AI-based services.

Therefore, Setiadi said he believes that similar steps can also be implemented by Google in Indonesia to fight online gambling, which damages public morals.

He then assured that the AI used for eradicating online gambling will use the latest technology.

In the last year, the government has taken serious steps to fight online gambling practices in the digital space.

At the end of May 2024, President Joko Widodo reassigned the national task force to eradicate online gambling.

The integrated unit working across ministries and institutions is led by Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law, and Security, Hadi Tjahjanto, with the mandate to dismantle the online gambling ecosystem in Indonesia.

In the period from July 17, 2023, to May 22, 2024, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, which has been entrusted with the task of prevention, cut off access to 1,918,520 online gambling content.

The ministry also closed 18,877 online gambling page inserts on educational sites and 22,714 online gambling page inserts on government sites in the period from 2023 to May 22, 2024.

During its monitoring, the ministry detected 20,241 keywords related to online gambling content on Google from November 7, 2023, to May 22, 2024. They were followed by 2,702 keywords on Meta’s social networking platform, which were recorded from December 15, 2022, to May 22, 2024.

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