The nation’s first program to support AI deletion of digital sex crimes, developed by Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG), received the coveted Presidential Prize at the “2023 Government Innovation Outstanding Practice Competition.”
The 2023 Government Innovation Outstanding Practice Competition is an annual event designed to explore, share and spread outstanding government innovation practices.
A combined 533 government innovation examples were presented by all government agencies and public organizations during the latest competition.
The entries competed in the first and second preliminary rounds, with experts’ screening and an online public evaluation involving 21,000 people.
Out of the total, 13 cases advanced to the final round. The finalists were determined at the tertiary competition held on Nov. 15.
Ten experts and 100 public evaluation members participated in the government innovation competition and designated one grand prize winner (presidential award), five gold medalists (presidential awards) and seven silver medalists.
The grand prize went to SMG’s program to support AI deletion of digital sex crimes.
SMG’s program to support AI deletion of digital sex crimes is a system in which an AI technology automatically detects videos of sex crime victims through real-time monitoring around the clock, deletes them faster and prevent their redistribution.
In July 2022, SMG and the Seoul Institute jointly launched a project to develop the program.
The development was completed in March 2023.
The program has been highly praised for its use of AI to find and delete videos of sex crime victims faster and more precisely, and solving the chronic issues of conventional digital sex crimes by easing the pain of victims and assisting their return to normal life.
SMG monitored a combined 450,000 videos through the Seoul Digital Sex Crime Safety Support Center in the seven months since AI was introduced.
The figure represents a 1,265 percent jump over 33,511 cases monitored by people during the period between March 29 and Oct. 31, 2022.
It took an average of two hours to enter key words and detect videos via manual process, but the AI technology reduced the time to 3 minutes, or 97.5 percent, thus doubling support for the deleting of sex victim videos.
SMG plans to concentrate on the prevention of child and youth sex crime victims on top of the introduction of the AI technology.
Of late, digital sex crime victim cases targeting children and adolescents are on a constant rise. Many have been circulated online without being reported by victims or their families.
Unlike adults whose videos can be removed with their consent, children and youth have their videos deleted without being reported by themselves or their parents in accordance with the Act on the Protection of Children and Youth, so authorities plan to take preemptive steps to prevent digital sex crimes through AI detection and surveillance.
Since distinguishing videos of child and youth victims with those of adults is not easy, SMG plans to develop an AI-based program to remove an AI-based child and youth victim videos in cooperation with the Seoul Institute.
If a program is developed on gender prediction models by recognizing child and youth victim faces and background subjects and analyzing related messages, it is expected to give a leg-up to support for removing child and youth sex crime victim videos.
Kim Sun-soon, head of the Women & Family Policy Affairs Office at SMG, said, “Support for deleting digital sex crime videos is badly needed for many people, and we will do our utmost so each of the victims can be restored to daily life by easing their pains through innovation technologies like the AI-based program and offering tightly-knitted one-stop services ranging from prevention to support of victims.”
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