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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

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Speaker 2: Gaming platform Roadblocks is introducing a new feature for verifying

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Speaker 2: users ages. Take a selfie and the AI will estimate

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Speaker 2: the user's age. If the tech determines they're over thirteen,

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Speaker 2: then the user will have access to the new Trusted

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Speaker 2: Connections feature where they can chat freely with other Roadblocks users.

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Speaker 2: Delighted to say that joining us now is Roadblocks is

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Speaker 2: CEO David Bazooki, DA, good morning. Thank you for being

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Speaker 2: back on Bloomberg Tech. I find the tech so interesting here.

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Speaker 2: Could we just go over the basics of how it

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Speaker 2: works and why this is the right technology for this issue.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.

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Speaker 1: We've been innovating on safety and civility for almost twenty years,

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Speaker 1: and what we're rolling out today is our vision for

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Speaker 1: age based communication. Age based communication, especially for teens thirteen

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Speaker 1: through seven, which is a vulnerable time, involves a couple things. First,

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Speaker 1: trusted connections, so identifying friends and people that you know

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Speaker 1: and trust, and second, using age estimation to enable trusted

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Speaker 1: connections to actually allow those teams to speak a little

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Speaker 1: more freely on our platform, even though we do scan

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Speaker 1: the text for critical harms. And this is super important

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Speaker 1: because business notwithstanding, engagement notwithstanding, we're trying to keep people

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Speaker 1: on our platform so they don't dump to other platforms

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Speaker 1: where they may share images or where they may communicate

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Speaker 1: without text monitoring.

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Speaker 2: Dave, the skeptic here, will say, well, well, how good

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Speaker 2: is the AI? How can the video and an AI

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Speaker 2: analysis of it, analysis of it guarantee a correct result

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Speaker 2: that the person using it is indeed age thirteen or older.

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Speaker 3: I want to highlight a couple of things.

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Speaker 1: We've been innovating on AI for four years plus and

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Speaker 1: we're running over two hundred AI systems. We've open sourced

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Speaker 1: our voice moderation system because it's so good, and we've

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Speaker 1: really advanced the state of the art and text moderation

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Speaker 1: systems as well.

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Speaker 3: This is age estimation. The AI is really good.

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Speaker 1: It's not perfect, of course, but we're leaning conservative in

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Speaker 1: that case, and I'll highlight we're using this in a

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Speaker 1: conservative way to enable freer communication that is still monitored.

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Speaker 1: So we've really thought a lot about it, and we

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Speaker 1: think this is the future of how teens will communicate.

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Speaker 2: In testing. What is the proportion bin of sort of

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Speaker 2: false positives and accurate results? And is there an element

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Speaker 2: of sort of human moderation in the first instance.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I want to highlight for historically there's always

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Speaker 1: been an element of moderation on roadblocks, and all texts,

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Speaker 1: all voice, all images has always gone through moderation, including

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Speaker 1: AI and human moderation. So we have such a firm

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Speaker 1: foundation for safety. We're using age estimation to in a

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Speaker 1: way slightly free.

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Speaker 3: Up the communication.

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Speaker 1: If you and I were fourteen on roadblocks and you

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Speaker 1: called me a butt head, I wouldn't see it.

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Speaker 3: We'd see a bunch of hashtags.

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Speaker 1: But it's the kind of thing a lot of teens

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Speaker 1: like to chat about, and when it's with people you

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Speaker 1: know and trust, we're open to letting them communicate more

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Speaker 1: freely in that way.

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Speaker 2: Dave is probably really helpful to put this in the

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Speaker 2: context of a case study example, and Grow a Garden

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Speaker 2: is probably the best right. So if you just bear

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Speaker 2: with me, and then we bring it back to product safety,

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Speaker 2: there are all of these teenagers wanting to be on

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Speaker 2: Grow a Garden and then share with their peers, right

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Speaker 2: their friends, that their community of a similar age. How

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Speaker 2: does this new technology fit into the daily run of

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Speaker 2: that game and how players and users interact with one another.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for highlighting grow a Garden.

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Speaker 1: Just as last summer, Dressed to Impress was going crazy

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Speaker 1: on roadblocks. Right now, grow a Garden has hit over

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Speaker 1: twenty million people playing it at the same time, which

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Speaker 1: is actually a record, we believe.

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Speaker 3: For any game in the history of gaming.

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Speaker 1: People really want to hang out with their friends and communicate,

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Speaker 1: and up until now, if you and I were fifteen

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Speaker 1: and we were trying to communicate once again, we might

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Speaker 1: see some hashes and some blocking when we're trying to

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Speaker 1: compete in the game.

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Speaker 3: With the release of this.

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Speaker 1: If we are trusted connections and we can validate we're

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Speaker 1: people we know and we trust, and then we take

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Speaker 1: a selfie to estimate our age, we're going to be

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Speaker 1: able to communicate more freely and have possibly more fun

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Speaker 1: and grow a Garden and be less likely to go

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Speaker 1: to some other platform where maybe we start sharing selfies

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Speaker 1: or things that we don't allow on roadblocks.

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Speaker 2: Right Dave, is grow a Go the biggest game you've

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Speaker 2: had ever?

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Speaker 3: Well, I think it's been very public.

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Speaker 1: A couple of weekends ago we hit over thirty million

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Speaker 1: people on roadblocks playing at the same time, and for

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Speaker 1: a moment in time, grow a Garden hit over twenty

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Speaker 1: million people playing at the same time. It's not just

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Speaker 1: the biggest we've ever had on Roadblocks. That is, we

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Speaker 1: believe the largest concurrent player of any game in history.

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Speaker 2: And just very quickly, Dave, would you just define largest

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Speaker 2: concurrent played.

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Speaker 1: We believe from the Guinness Book of World Records that

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Speaker 1: twenty million is the largest concurrent players of any game

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Speaker 1: in real time in history.

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Speaker 2: Okay, understood. What many people don't appreciate about Roadblocks is

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Speaker 2: the scale of your own infrastructure. I think that you

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Speaker 2: that you run yourself. You have a lot of footprint

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Speaker 2: on prem with all the activity. Are your servers and

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Speaker 2: CPUs just melting on Friday and Saturday nights or how

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Speaker 2: are you handling all of the traffic right now?

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Speaker 1: Well, we do like it when our servers melt, as

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Speaker 1: long as we stay live and we stay up. And

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Speaker 1: what we have done over the last couple of years

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Speaker 1: is abstracted all of this infrastructure we have, and you're

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Speaker 1: absolutely correct. We believe we get better performance, better reliability,

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Speaker 1: and better cost building out all of our own data

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Speaker 1: centers around the world. We have started working with partners though,

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Speaker 1: and you know those partners as you're Amazon AWSGCP at

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Speaker 1: peak times to burst into their cloud as well, so

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Speaker 1: we can run all of our own infro, but for

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Speaker 1: Saturday morning for two hours, we're actually relying on some

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Speaker 1: of these partners to hit those peaks.

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Speaker 2: Dave Roadblocks has been subject to a lot of scrutiny

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Speaker 2: over child safety, the feature that you're announcing today, but

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Speaker 2: also the sort of technological capability for you as the

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Speaker 2: leader of this company. Where does it rank and what

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Speaker 2: you think will sort of address those historic issues but

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Speaker 2: also just allow you to move forward in growing because

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Speaker 2: you have an ambition right to capture ten percent of

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Speaker 2: the market, and I'm just trying to understand how this

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Speaker 2: piece of tech allows you to tap into a demographic

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Speaker 2: that will get you there.

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Speaker 1: We've been focusing on safety civility as top priority for

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Speaker 1: almost twenty years. We believe this is the future of

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Speaker 1: communication on social platforms, especially for teens, and we believe

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Speaker 1: the future will be for teens in that vulnerable time,

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Speaker 1: trusted connections plus some form of age estimation or verification

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Speaker 1: or maybe someday help from the phone vendors and other things,

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Speaker 1: but ultimately for private chat. We believe this is the future.

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Speaker 1: So we're we haven't been waiting for the law. We

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Speaker 1: haven't been waiting for legislation. We've We think this thirteen

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Speaker 1: through seventeen segment is just as important.

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Speaker 3: It's thirteen and under and eighteen and nine.

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Speaker 2: We didn't even get to advertising on the platform. All

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Speaker 2: of the millionaires that are being minted through platform. Dave Bazooki,

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Speaker 2: you have to come back, CEO of Roadblocks. Thank you

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Speaker 2: very much