Casino uses facial recognition technology to supplement security
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TULSA – The River Spirit Casino and Resort in Tulsa has employed “face-based” security software to help in monitoring its gaming floors.
According to a release from the company that provided the technology, about 10,000 people each day spend time playing slot machines, blackjack or other games spread across 200,000 square feet inside the casino. In an effort to stay ahead of potential problems, its operator, Muscogee Nation Gaming Enterprises, opted recently to employ the OnWatch system developed by Oosto, an international artificial intelligence company with headquarters in New York.
Managing security in the sprawling casino is complex, and keeping track of potential “bad actors” in real time is difficult under various levels of lighting and obstructions, the company said. River Spirit’s security team concluded that to best combat thefts and fraud, maintain compliance with regulatory requirements, and be able to research video footage for investigative purposes, facial recognition technology offered benefits. Already, the system has helped identify evicted or banned patrons who have almost immediately been asked to leave by security officers. The system also has allowed for better tracking of “persons of interest” throughout the venue without interfering with guests.
“With Oosto, we have eliminated most of the manual processes associated with identifying bad actors as they enter the casino. When a patron does something inside the property that is considered a crime or unwanted, that person is barred from entering the property again,” said Travis Thompson, director of compliance with Muscogee Nation Gaming. “Their profile is entered into Oosto, and the system looks for that face every time they enter the property.”
Thompson said that since the system was employed, three to five “positive detections” have been made per day of potentially unwanted guests.
“We know that we’re keeping the right people out and I think that makes our players more comfortable,” he said.
According to the release, Oosto’s Vision AI platform has been employed by retail stores, banks, at sporting venues and in buildings of Fortune 500 companies and other companies around the world. Founded in 2015, the company operates globally through a network of offices and distributors and is backed by investors including Softbank Vision Fund, Eldridge, Qualcomm Ventures and DFJ Growth.
The Muscogee Nation’s integration and consulting firm partner, Orion Security Solutions, conducted proof-of-concept projects with Oosto’s software.
“Casinos are pretty challenging environments, to be honest,” Orion President and CEO Sean Crain said. “We need a facial recognition system to spot banned patrons in spite of large groups of people entering all at once, cameras being positioned quite high, visitors not looking directly into cameras, and even if people are wearing face coverings like masks, hats or glasses. Oosto’s facial recognition system is able to identify potential problem people accurately and in real-time under these tough conditions. That allows the security and the surveillance team to anticipate, prevent and deter crime and bad behavior before it happens. The Muscogee Nation saw the value in that.”
Oosto systems have been employed in other casinos as well in recent years.
“We were really excited to demonstrate how much value Oosto’s vision AI could provide to Muscogee Nation Gaming Enterprises in support of their very busy security team,” said Adi Nativ, the company’s chief revenue officer. “When battle-tested against other facial recognition technology providers in complex environments, Oosto always proves to be the superior solution ‘in the wild’ – our accuracy and speed of detection are unmatched.”
Additional advantages to using Oosto’s system include the company’s Centralized Intelligence Database module, which offers River Spirit a one-source destination that houses information on all bad actors from Muscogee Nation’s multiple properties. Moreover, if a crime happens on the property and the casino’s team needs to look at historical video footage for information on activity leading up to it, an analytics tool can “ingest” video from multiple sources and quickly analyze the footage to inform teams about the full context of a perpetrator’s actions.
“(That’s) one of the areas that I really enjoy the most about it,” Thompson said. “We can backward search or we can forward search from the point we put in and so we know when people have been on our property and I think that’s extremely helpful to us.”
With 524 gaming operations scattered across the United States, American Indian-operated casinos represent 43% of all casino gaming revenue in the country, according to the National Indian Gaming Commission. According to the American Gaming Association, 2021 was a record year for casino and gaming industry revenues, and while a boom in mobile sports betting is partially responsible for this surge, in-person gambling continues to dominate.
