Pornhub is persuading people away from child abuse: Chatbot to work for the motive

The most popular pornographic website in the world, Pornhub, will start using AI to block content featuring child sex assault. The company has put a chatbot to work to address Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). Pornhub's chatbot will appear on users' screens and inform them that they are trying to locate something they shouldn't be looking for when users search for this kind of content.

To better comprehend the search phrases that these persons might enter into a search box, the website has worked with child abuse groups. When it comes to the regulation of films on its website, Pornhub has a dubious image. Reports have shown how women and girls had footage of themselves uploaded without their permission. More than 10 million movies were taken off Pornhub's website in December 2020, and the company started requesting identity verification from anyone adding content. 9,000 pieces of CSAM were taken off Pornhub last year. Pornhub's chatbot now checks for child sexual abuse material always.

According to Donald Findlater, the director of the Stop, It Now supports line administered by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, using a chatbot  to work is more straightforward and conceivably more interesting. In March, more than 170,000 times, 158 people clicked over to the assistance line's website after seeing the chatbot. Even while the number is "small," according to Findlater, those individuals have taken a significant step. Findlater notes that "they've overcome quite a few obstacles to do that." The IWF's Hargreaves continues, "Anything that prevents people from just starting the journey is a measure of success." "We are aware that people use it. We are aware that they are making referrals and using the services.

They will also search in other locations, whether it be on different social networking platforms or gaming platforms, according to Findlater. But if that happened, the system would need to be recreated for the particular website it is on and the triggers that make it appear would need to be examined. Pornhub's search phrases, for example, wouldn't appear in a Google search. We are unable to apply one set of cautions to another, according to Findlater.

The IWF chatbot, according to a Pornhub spokesperson, is "yet another layer of protection to ensure users are educated that they will not find such illegal material on our platform, and referring them to Stop It Now to help change their behavior." Pornhub has "zero tolerance" for illegal material and is very clear about its CSAM policies. The chatbot project's participants claim Pornhub volunteered to participate and wasn't paid for doing so. The system will operate on Pornhub's UK website for the ensuing year before being assessed by other researchers.

There has been an increase, according to John Perrino, a policy analyst at the Stanford Internet Observatory who is unaffiliated with the project, in recent years to create new tools that employ "safety by design" to counteract damages online. "It's an exciting cooperation, in terms of public perception and policy, to assist users and direct them toward healthy resources and lifestyles," adds Perrino. He continues by saying that he has never before seen a tool created specifically for a pornographic website.

According to Susie Hargreaves, the IWF's chief executive, "we eliminated a quarter of a million webpages containing child sexual abuse material from the internet in 2021, up 64% from 2020." "There were 8 million attempts to access only three of the websites on our block list in the first month of the U.K. lockdown. These figures are alarming.

She gave the Canadian business MindGeek, which owns Pornhub, kudos for agreeing to participate in the trial. One of the most well-known Internet corporations in the world, MindGeek owns Pornhub and other pornographic websites. Hargreaves emphasized that only one video out of the 169,000 pieces of content her agency had taken down this year came from Pornhub. However, attempts to locate such content on Pornhub continued, which is why a new bot was created.

Nowadays, Pornhub is probably rather clean, at least in terms of CSAM. Millions of videos were removed, and the company revised its policy to be more restrictive about what may be put on the internet, as a result of rising pressure in 2020. IWF claims that its goal is to "divert" or "disrupt" people's searches for CSAM rather than expose or report them.

It is hoped that by letting people know what they are searching for, they won't do it again. Of course, this might work with some people, but it's unlikely to work for those who are serious about looking for that kind of content. The fact that 158 of the individuals who interacted with a chatbot clicked on the hotline website may be encouraging.