As an attempt to make the internet a safe place for children, Microsoft has developed a tool that helps detect and report online predators that exploit children for inappropriate purposes.
The project is codenamed Project Artemis. The development of the project began back in November 2018 at a Microsoft “360 Cross-Industry Hackathon”. Since then, the tech giant collaborated with The Meet Group, Roblox, Kik, and Thorn for developing the tool.
The tool evaluates and rates text conversations. The companies incorporating the tool can set a rating value limit, crossing which would flag the message and require human moderation. This will significantly reduce the workload of human moderators.
Qualified service companies can integrate this tool for free through Thorn, a nonprofit organization focused on building tools to protect children from sexual abuse. You can reach out to Thorn here for testing and incorporating the tool.
“Project Artemis is a significant step forward, but it is by no means a panacea. Child sexual exploitation and abuse online and the detection of online child grooming are weighty problems. But we are not deterred by the complexity and intricacy of such issues.”, wrote Courtney Gregoire, Microsoft’s Chief Digital Safety Officer in a blog post.
“On the contrary, we are making the tool available at this point in time to invite further contributions and engagement from other technology companies and organizations with the goal of continuous improvement and refinement.”, she added.
It is worth noting that Microsoft has been using the tool to scan chats that might provoke sexual abuse on the Xbox platform. The Redmond giant is now planning to implement the same on Skype.
