The new government of Indonesia is utilising artificial intelligence to tackle the issue of online gambling.

In October, as a measure to combat the illicit activities, the new government of Indonesia took action by blocking 380,000 online gambling sites. Legislators are detecting and blocking providers with the use of artificial intelligence.

Pabrowo Subianto, Indonesia's new president, has reaffirmed the nation's aim to ban internet gambling. In the most populous Muslim nation on Earth, it is absolutely forbidden.

It was renamed the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs after the election in October from the Ministry of Communication and Informatics. Meutya Hafid was named head of the renamed ministry by Subianto.

Quickly, Hafid unveiled a 100-day plan with four objectives: protecting citizens' private information, making government services digital, doing away with internet gambling, and making the internet safer for children.

According to Hafid, the government is utilising AI to identify and remove offensive gambling information.

There are "has reached around 380,000" closed sites "if we count from 20 October," she added. Among them are hundreds of advertisements on websites like Meta, Google, and Twitter, as well as 300,000 illicit IP addresses.

The new minister also announced that "special cyber-patrols to detect sites and applications that contain gambling content" had been established by the government.

As Juda Agung, Bank Indonesia's deputy governor, pointed out, "both banks and non-banks, must have fraud detection systems to identify accounts used for online gambling." This requirement applies to all financial institutions that process payments.

In Indonesia, an issue that affects everyone
Despite the fact that gambling is against the law in Indonesia, the love of a flutter among Indonesians has not been diminished. Gamblers lost RP327 trillion ($20.5 billion, €19.5 billion, or £16.2 billion) in 2023, according to figures released by ABC Asia. Roughly 1.5 percent of GDP each year comes to that.

Online gambling has generated RP283 trillion so far this year, according to estimates from the Financial Transaction estimates and Analysis Centre (PPATK). There were RP43 trillion in deposits. The majority of that sum leaves the nation.

A "social disaster" was the description given by Muhaimin Iskandar, minister of community empowerment, regarding internet gambling, as reported by Antara News Agency. "Victims of online fraud" are gamblers, he continued.

"This phenomenon will increase the poverty rate unless we overcome online gambling from upstream and downstream," he said.

An additional 80,000 people under the age of 10 are among the estimated 960,000 internet gamblers in the nation, according to Satryo Soemantri Brodjonegoro, the minister of education.

An technique that combines the two facets of digital literacy
According to Iskander, the government is implementing a two-pronged strategy to crack down on internet gambling. First, there's the computerised monitoring of financial transactions and internet traffic. The second is making more people in Indonesia knowledgeable about and comfortable using digital tools.

Abolition of this scam is a collective responsibility, he emphasised. "The general public, and the grassroots specifically, should not be fooled by this strategy."