The debate around artificial intelligence in iGaming has converged on a single question: how closely can technology replicate real human interaction at a casino table.
The logic behind that question is understandable, given that live casino built its success on real people, real studios, and genuine player interaction over many years.
New market entrants see an opportunity to challenge the cost and complexity of the live model by using AI to deliver something similar but more efficiently.
Many companies pursue variations of this strategy, investing in realism, motion capture, and increasingly lifelike avatars with one shared objective in mind.
But ICONIC21 Chief Product Officer Edvardas Sadovskis argues that measuring AI success against a human benchmark is fundamentally the wrong approach to product development.
Industry commentator Fintan Costello previously highlighted a familiar trap, arguing that products attempting to replicate human interaction often remain recognisably artificial and end up feeling repetitive and slightly off.
Sadovskis builds on that argument, suggesting the industry’s imagination may be too limited when it frames AI purely as a human substitute rather than a new category entirely.
That thinking directly shaped how ICONIC21 approached the development of its iDealer Blackjack product, built using RAVATAR’s real-time AI avatar technology.
The product is a classic seven-seat RNG blackjack table where the maths, speed, and RTP behave exactly like standard RNG blackjack, with an AI dealer that can converse with players and maintain context throughout a session.
Critically, the dealer is openly AI, with no attempt to disguise that fact or present the experience as a replacement for a live casino table.
Sadovskis notes that one of the most interesting observations from their own tables is that players interact differently when they know the dealer is AI.
Rather than focusing solely on gameplay, some players begin broader conversations covering trivia, history, current events, and jokes that would rarely emerge at a traditional casino table.
The absence of social friction appears to change the dynamic entirely, removing ambiguity from the interaction and opening up a more natural form of engagement between player and product.
ICONIC21 has positioned iDealer Blackjack within its RNG library rather than under a live-casino tab, reflecting a deliberate product decision rather than a marketing one.
Pennsylvania’s regulatory guidance categorising virtual casino products within RNG frameworks supports the view that virtual dealers are increasingly being treated as distinct from live casino products.
Sadovskis argues that if a game is fundamentally RNG blackjack, it should be presented honestly as RNG blackjack, with the AI personality functioning as an additional layer rather than a change to the underlying product.
The broader industry debate too often frames AI as a replacement for live casino, a framing that assumes the outcome of that competition has already been decided before the category has matured.
Sadovskis points to the uncanny valley not as a technology problem that better graphics or motion capture will eventually solve, but as a strategy problem that emerges when the objective is replication rather than genuine innovation.
The more useful question, he argues, is whether virtual casino can be treated as its own category from the start rather than a lesser imitation of something else.
If virtual casino truly is a distinct category, its future may belong not to products that look most human, but to those confident enough to be something entirely different.
