Sportsbet expands beta access to AI betting assistant beyond horse racing

Sportsbet's AI betting assistant, Ask AI, remains in beta and is available to about 30% of customers, according to Martha Sevigny, senior product manager at Sportsbet. The company intends to extend access to all customers, she said.

The tool launched in April 2025 for horse-racing bets, and its extension to other sports began in December, Sevigny said. Customers can put a question in natural language and receive statistics, insights and suggested options, which they can accept, amend or simply review, she said.

Sevigny said a working group was set up the previous year to examine how generative AI could address practical problems and customer needs, and that research repeatedly pointed to speed and simplicity. In most cases customers use the tool as intended, and their questions and feedback shape the development roadmap, she said.

According to Sevigny, the tool draws on statistics and insights from the same sources used elsewhere in the app. It is designed to state its limits explicitly, telling users when it cannot answer a question and, where possible, offering related information, she said. Warnings inside the product state that the service is for entertainment and that no advice is provided, she added.

When a bet is suggested, users see supporting information explaining why that option was proposed, including relevant insights and, where available, recent performance data for the team or player concerned, Sevigny said. She said Ask AI may suggest several options, but the decision to place, change or abandon a bet stays with the customer, and that many users employ the tool only to consult statistics and insights.

On responsible gambling, Sevigny said customer protection is a core part of the design. The tool includes safety measures intended to detect certain requests that may indicate a need for additional support; when these are triggered, Ask AI does not provide betting suggestions and directs the user to responsible-gambling information and support resources, she said. These measures sit alongside Sportsbet's existing customer-protection tools, controls and procedures, according to Sevigny.

Sevigny said preset prompts, which let customers use the tool without writing a request, account for about half of all requests, making their effectiveness a priority. She said feedback from the initial horse-racing launch, which aimed to help customers interpret horse form quickly, prompted the extension to other sports.

FanDuel shared research on its in-app AI tool, Ace AI, which allowed the two teams to compare how customers use the products and to address common issues such as building trust in AI, Sevigny said. She described the collaboration as an example of Flutter Edge, the group's sharing of knowledge between brands.

On next steps, Sevigny said she wants AI to help develop experiences that follow how customers search for information, explore options and bet, and that the company intends to keep developing AI applications that are useful to customers. She said the technology is evolving quickly and that more possibilities remain to be explored.