DraftKings Is Using AI to Supercharge the Harms of Online Behavioral Advertising

DraftKings is training machine learning models on customers’ own betting records to identify people most likely to lose and then serving them targeted promotions to lure them back. The company has a financial incentive to re-engage losing gamblers - including people exhibiting problem-gambling behaviors - because those users generate revenue. Using AI lets DraftKings process vast datasets faster and more precisely, and the opaque, “black box” nature of these models drives continuous collection of ever more personal information to improve performance. Because DraftKings appears to rely on first‑party data it collects directly, limits that target only third‑party data sharing would not stop this kind of predatory targeting.

The practice illustrates a broader danger: online behavioral advertising powers a surveillance economy whose data is repurposed and sold to insurers, banks, and government agencies, and even draws explicit interest from immigration and border enforcement. The remedy proposed is to ban behavioral advertising outright so companies lose the incentive to harvest and trade sensitive behavioral profiles. Practical mitigations for individuals include privacy tools and guidance to limit tracking, but the systemic fix urged is to remove the commercial reward structure that turns vulnerability into a profit center.