The Central Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center in South Korea has reported that the average daily support for the removal of child and adolescent sexual exploitation material has increased nearly tenfold since the introduction of an artificial intelligence (AI) detection system.
During a press tour held on November 10 at the Korea Women's Human Rights Center in Jungnim-dong, the center revealed the achievements of its AI-based online detection and reporting system for child and adolescent sexual exploitation.
The AI system, implemented in April, automatically detects and analyzes sexual exploitation material and grooming information online 24 hours a day.
Currently, the system collects and analyzes data from four social media platforms, including Google, X, Bluesky, and Telegram, as well as ten chat applications, automatically gathering information on child sexual exploitation and grooming. Following this, it submits deletion requests based on staff reviews.
In the past six months, the system has facilitated the removal of 96,210 instances of child and adolescent sexual exploitation material. This figure is more than double the 45,438 cases supported manually last year.
The average monthly removal requests increased from 3,787 last year to 16,035 from April to September this year, a rise of approximately 4.2 times. Additionally, the average number of cases handled per staff member per day jumped from 20.8 to 202.1, nearly a 9.7-fold increase.
A representative from the Central Digital Center stated, "The introduction of the AI system, trained on over 40,000 images and texts, has significantly improved the speed of removal processing and alleviated the psychological burden on staff caused by exposure to sexual exploitation material."
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the center plan to enhance the AI detection system to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of removal support. In collaboration with the Ministry of Science and ICT, they aim to expand the number of platforms targeted for detection from 74 to 139 by next year and improve the AI's ability to understand the flow and context of conversations.
Kim Mi-soon, head of the Central Digital Center, emphasized, "We are proactively identifying and supporting the removal of child and adolescent sexual exploitation material even without requests from victims. We aim to use AI to discover victims more quickly and connect them with necessary support more swiftly."
Efforts to strengthen cooperation with relevant domestic and international organizations will also be intensified, as illegal distribution of sexual exploitation material primarily occurs on overseas platforms, with 30% of these platforms not responding to deletion requests from the Central Digital Center.
Kim Seong-byeok, head of the Digital Sexual Crime Prevention Division at the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, noted, "As new technologies are developed, counter-technologies continue to emerge. Our government policy is to enhance deletion effectiveness through the introduction of the latest technologies while pursuing thorough tracking and blocking through collaboration with relevant departments and institutional improvements."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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