Ukraine has approved a national gambling strategy that puts artificial intelligence and automated monitoring at the centre of efforts to tackle illegal operators, unlawful advertising and gambling-related harm.
The Cabinet of Ministers adopted the strategy on August 26 under Order No. 855-r. It runs through 2035 and is accompanied by an operational plan for 2027 to 2029, bringing together around 40 public bodies across health, education, defence, security and gambling regulation.
The policy is significant because AI is not being treated simply as a tool for gambling companies. Ukraine is also planning to use it on the regulatory side, making automated systems part of the infrastructure for identifying illegal activity and detecting risky patterns.
AI moves from operator tool to regulator tool
Much of the conversation around AI in gambling has focused on what operators do with data. Machine learning can support fraud detection, recommendations, customer service and behavioural monitoring. Ukraine’s new strategy shifts attention to what regulators can do with similar technology.
According to Gambling.com’s report on the strategy, the government plans software that can automatically scan websites, mobile apps and other online resources for unlicensed gambling activity. Other tools are expected to identify methods used by illegal operators to evade blocking systems, while AI will also analyse player behaviour for signs of gambling-related risk.
The government is targeting at least five new digital monitoring and enforcement technologies by 2035, including tools capable of tracing virtual-asset transactions linked to illegal gambling.
Illegal gambling is a major part of the problem
The strategy comes against a large enforcement challenge. Ukrainian authorities identified thousands of unlicensed gambling websites during 2025, while the legal market consists of a much smaller group of licensed operators.
An iGaming Business report on the policy says the government intends to combine systematic blocking of illegal websites and advertising with prevention, early detection and treatment measures. The strategy also gives particular attention to military personnel and veterans, groups the government considers more vulnerable because of wartime psychological strain.
The distinction between licensed and unlicensed services is also technological. Regulated platforms may need identity checks, payment controls, account restrictions and systems that record activity across different products. A service offering sportsbook markets, slots or Stake live casino, for example, sits inside a wider technical environment than the game interface visible to the user. Ukraine’s plan extends that data-driven logic to supervision, using automated systems to identify where activity falls outside the regulated framework.
Advertising is another target
Illegal gambling advertising has become a visible part of Ukraine’s enforcement campaign. The new strategy calls for automated monitoring of online promotion, potentially allowing regulators to search far more content than a human team could review manually.
That matters because illegal operators can move quickly between websites, social accounts and advertising channels. Manual enforcement is often reactive. By the time one domain or campaign is identified, another may already have appeared.
AI does not remove that problem, but it can change the scale of monitoring. Image recognition, text classification and network analysis can help authorities flag suspicious content and identify links between domains, payment routes and promotional accounts.
The difficult part will be accuracy. Automated systems can generate false positives, and regulators still need clear rules for when a machine-generated signal is strong enough to justify action.
Player behaviour raises harder questions
Using AI to identify illegal websites is relatively straightforward compared with analysing people. Behavioral risk systems depend on data about how users interact with gambling products, raising questions about privacy, transparency and what happens after a risk signal is generated.
The strategy is not an immediate technical rulebook for every operator. Many measures will require later implementation through regulations, software projects and agency procedures. The current decision is therefore a framework rather than a finished enforcement system.
Still, the direction is clear. Ukraine is treating gambling regulation as a digital systems problem as well as a legal and public-health issue.
Regulation is becoming a software challenge
Online gambling has always forced regulators to keep pace with technology, but AI raises the stakes because both sides can automate. Operators can personalise services and detect fraud at scale, while illegal businesses can change domains, advertising methods and payment routes quickly.
Ukraine’s answer is to build more automation into the state’s response. If the strategy is implemented as planned, regulators will increasingly rely on software not only to record violations after they happen but to find patterns earlier.
That makes the policy relevant beyond Ukraine. Other gambling regulators face the same basic problem — digital markets move faster than manual supervision. Ukraine is now testing whether AI can help close that gap.
