Artificial intelligence to address online abuse against Children

Thousands of children face sexual exploitation online every year. As per CyberTipline's 2019 report, India accounted for 11.7%, with 1,987,430 cases of all suspected child sexual offenses. One out of five Indian children aged between 8 and 17 get cyber bullied in every 16 minutes. While social media and other digital platforms have encouraged abusers another avenue to hurt victims, technology can also help to reduce the pain.

A thriving member of Oracle for Startups, BotSupply is using its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot technology to reinforce saving the Children Denmark's SletDet or 'Erase It' initiative that is designed to address digital-based sexual offenses.

The new fight against Cyber bullying

SletDet or 'Erase It' initiative was set up to help children and young adults to make them aware of their rights if someone posts their pictures online without their consent and aid in deleting them. It also aimed to help young adults to restrain the damage these difficult situations can cause. But the initiative was only staffed three days a week.

The charity is now using BotSupply's technology, runs on Oracle Cloud, easing it for Oracle customers and clients across four countries to build multilingual chatbots without any coding. The charity's vision was to break down the barriers protecting victims from reporting incidents, asking for advice, and accessing information to help them cope with cyber bullying and online abuse by making its service available 24/7.

BotSupply worked with the Save the Children team to co-create the Danish speaking chatbot for its consumer-facing website to identify and resolve the most common requests.

For instance, if a teenager has discovered somebody has uploaded a picture of him/her that s/he doesn't want to be online, the chatbot can guide him/her on what s/he should do, such as how to report it on a social media platform or by arranging a meeting with a counsellor.

"It truly can guide the user in a non-intrusive way to help them solve a problem," says Pragya Mishra, Head of Growth at BotSupply.

Benefits of Chatbots

"Sometimes, the universe finds it more accessible to talk to a chatbot than to a real human because it allows you to reach out and find the solution, you are searching for without fear of any judgment, explains Pragya Mishra. Chatbots have no values or views of being robots, making it less terrifying to talk to than an adult for many teenagers.

She states, "When you are at that age, you don't want to visit someone who is at your parents' age, and that's a barrier."

The hi-tech approach seems to be working so far. The charity hit its primary KPI of 80% of users within three months of launching; having a short conversation with the bot, and monthly user requests to SletDev went up by a factor of seven.

"Our chatbot creates excellent value for us because it empowers us to reach out to users that we wouldn't usually get to," says Sophie Hoilund, Save the Children, Denmark. "We, therefore, have a comprehensive outreach and can help more children and young adults with digital sexual offenses through the chatbot."

Future Envision

The bot has been such a success that the Save the Children team envisions installing another chatbot for its Facebook page. Wherein BotSupply helps several industries worldwide to create multilingual chatbots, 'Save the Children' has added ROI using tech for good, which is a value BotSupply keeps on top of mind.

"We are already helping to shape the way humans interact with the world around them," Mishra says. "Children are moving towards this kind of behaviour, and technology can solve difficult emotional problems."

"Innovation that betters business is excellent. Innovation that helps humanity is exceptional," adds Pragya Mishra.