DraftKings accused in lawsuit of AI ‘weaponization’ to target gamblers, encouraging addiction - The Boston Globe

A federal lawsuit was filed against online gambling platform DraftKings Wednesday, alleging the Boston-based company uses predatory AI models that promote gambling addiction for profits.

The proposed class action lawsuit filed in US District Court in Boston alleges that DraftKings used artificial intelligence to identify customers who are more likely to gamble and lose, and thus spend more money in response to targeted promotions.

Plaintiff Daniel Vest, of West Virginia, says in the lawsuit that he lost thousands of dollars while gambling through DraftKings. He filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and to represent all those who received targeted promotions. He said in the lawsuit that in the month prior to Sept. 26, he received about 70 emails, texts, notifications and other messages from DraftKings, coaxing him to spend more money gambling.

“DK has weaponized AI to do just that – understand and exploit users’ vulnerabilities to financially benefit the company,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also alleges that DraftKings collected and analyzed data points for each user, including their spending habits and how much they typically lose. The company allegedly then failed to disclose to users that it was using AI or machine learning for that purpose, violating Massachusetts state law.

“DraftKings does not use AI to target customers based on losses, nor do we use AI to target customers based on indicators of potential problem gaming” a DraftKings spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “We intend to vigorously defend any potential lawsuits on the matter.”

The lawsuit comes after a September investigation from The New York Times uncovered the trend, and the lawsuit quotes heavily from the Times article. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission, the state regulator overseeing DraftKings and other gambling companies, said last week that it would examine the allegations against the company and others operating in the state.

In a Wednesday interview with the online news outlet The Wrap, DraftKings chief executive Jason Robins refuted The Times’ report, calling it “slanderous.”

“They said that we are writing models to target people that have problem gaming issues, which is not true,” Robins said in the interview, which was released ahead of the lawsuit’s filing. “In fact, we tell people to do the opposite, to try to figure out if people have problem gaming issues and give them warnings and eventually shut down their accounts if we need to.”

According to the lawsuit, a former DraftKings employee said he had worked on a system that identified people who were trying to ditch the platform. The system would then try to pull them back in, the employee told The Times.

Another former employee developed a program that boosted promotions for people who were gambling “more aggressively than usual,” according to the lawsuit.

“It is as predatory as it sounds,” a former employee told The Times, which is quoted in the lawsuit.

And DraftKings, the lawsuit alleges, reaped the benefits.

Analytics and data science helped drive up margins on promotion-driven sports bets by 13 percent in 2025 the lawsuit says. The program used AI to personalize hundreds of millions of promotional dollars, the lawsuits says.

The lawsuit refers to Citizens Bank research that showed DraftKings boasted around $8.7 billion in gross revenue from sports and casino gamblers in 2025, and handed out roughly $3 billion in promotions.

Per Massachusetts law, gambling organizations must disclose all use of AI and automated capabilities to the Gaming Commission, as well as report the ways in which they analyze customer data to mitigate addictive behavior. Gambling organizations are prohibited from using personal customer information in promotional material that uses AI or another form of an automated system.

“The New York Times does a very good job of reporting and checking their facts. But, as a government agency, we need to do some fact finding on the ground,” said Thomas Mills, a gaming commission spokesperson. The commission declined to comment on active litigation, or say what its investigation into DraftKings would entail.

“We’ll start with a conversation,” Mills added.

Dr. Timothy Fong, a psychiatry professor and co-director of the Gambling Studies Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, said enticements and promotions have been “going on since the dawn of regulated gambling.”

But the introduction of AI and its ability to predict and analyze user patterns raise what he described as a dark question.

“If they are scrubbing AI platforms to find the [users] who are clearly vulnerable, who are already addicted or going to become addicted ... that would be a tremendous violation of the spirit of business,” Fong said. “Are they using software deliberately to find those ones who are vulnerable and exploit them?”

AI and machine learning could be used for good, Fong added, if gambling companies identify users with alarming betting habits and help mitigate addiction, or cut them off.

DraftKings is already defending a number of lawsuits related to illegal gaming offerings, or misleading and addictive products, as well as a proposed class action lawsuit filed in a federal district court in Pennsylvania in April. The Pennsylvania lawsuit alleges that DraftKings targeted users with gambling addictions through its VIP program and misleading promotions.

Mark Gottlieb, executive director of Northeastern University’s Public Health Advocacy Institute compared the mounting lawsuits to the pushback against tobacco companies in the 1990s, which resulted in policy changes at the state and federal levels.

“This is exactly what we are beginning to see with DraftKings and others in the online gambling industry” Gottlieb said. “Their conduct is coming to light and the resulting wave of litigation will soon provide a level of transparency needed to make these products safer for the public.”

The lawsuit asks the court to certify a class action, award damages, require DraftKings to return money obtained through these practices, and order a stop to the use of AI models to target users and encourage them to gamble more.

This is a developing story.

Yogev Toby can be reached at yogev.toby@globe.com.