ROOST receives support from Google, and OpenAI to boost online child safety

At the Paris AI Summit on Monday, ROOST, an initiative that aims at delivering free online safety tools to businesses around the globe was announced. The ROOST short for Robust Open Online Safety Tools, is being funded by various tech firms including Google, OpenAI, and Robloxes and it focuses on open-source tools in the AI era. 

According to the press statement, ROOST plans to enhance protections for children by providing small businesses and other nonprofit organizations with crucial safety technologies. The initiative will operate as an online platform that allows the public to make innovations and make the vital online safety framework available. 

Eric Schmidt, a founding partner of ROOST highlighted the importance of the initiative saying that it seeks to meet the increasing requirement of having sustainable technology to prevent online exploitation of children.

ROOST crucial step towards AI safety

The advancement of AI has heightened worries about the safety of children in the online space. Bluesky, Mozilla, and Microsoft are some of the organizations that support ROOST, which shows their collective effort in building scalable and robust online safety tools.

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Mark Surman, the president of Mozilla, and Ayah Bdeir, the lead of AI strategy at Mozilla argue that open-source collaboration is very essential and that ROOST enables increased safety in a digital context. In addition, they pointed out that Mozilla being part of this effort is evidence of a more overarching investment in AI safety and transparency.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has noted a significant increase in the cases of online exploitation. Reports suggest that Child Exploitation Reports increased from 2022 to 2023 by 12 percent. 

In that same period, the circumstance of child exploitation on Roblox increased by 348 percent, while cases captured on the social chat application Discord increased twofold. The CyberTipline also reported over 186,000 online enticement cases in 2023 which is more than 300 percent increase since 2021.

The rise of explicit AI-generated content has made the protection of children much harder. This year alone, CyberTipline has received 4,700 reports of child sexual abuse materials featuring generative AI.

Recently, major tech companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Google have pledged to enhance defenses against AI exploitation after a scandal last year.