One of the biggest scourges of the Internet is pedophiles. From time to time we have examples so extreme, such as news with child pornography or news describing sexual exploitation that we literally feel no safety when our children touch a computer mouse. Children, who are very active users of the Internet, are also potential victims of these predators.
[col grid=”3-1 first”][quote]Children are a significant percentage of active Internet users. It is therefore no coincidence that pedophiles are present on the Internet. [/quote][/col]
Due to the undeniable fact, Spanish researchers have created a program that is capable of “pretending to be a 14-year-old girl and being able to identify pedophiles in chats and social networks. The Ertzaintza (the Basque police) has already shown its interest in Negobot. Negobot , as you correctly understood, is the name of the new software.
The program aims to automatically detect the behaviors of pedophiles online. The researchers from the University of Deusto who created Negobot even added a voice that faithfully simulates a fourteen-year-old girl who can also play verbally to hunt down potential pedophiles.
The project is very advanced and goes much further than Chatbots go.
“Chatbots tend to be very predictable. Their behavior and interest in a conversation is very flat, which is a problem when trying to detect untrustworthy targets, such as pedophiles,” says Carlos Laorden, a researcher at DeustoTech and member of the team responsible for creating Negobot.
“What’s new about Negobot is that it uses game theory to create a much more realistic conversation,” Laorden continues. As a result, they’ve managed to create a bot whose behavior changes during the conversation.
Negobot is a set of seven talking agents in one. Each has a different way of behaving. Since dangerous pedophiles can hide their intentions for days, the program starts with a neutral stance (from level 0), which can be maintained indefinitely.
If the topic is of no interest, the bot may state its preferences, without getting personal. This corresponds to levels from -1 to -3. These levels show the bot as almost offended, to the point that the subject understands.
Conversely, if suspicious behavior is detected, for example the pedophile starts asking for personal information, or is overly interested in the age of the virtual girl, the level rises to +3, which attempts to obtain personal data from the suspect.
Nevertheless, Negobot still has some limitations, such as language, because although it has speech capabilities, it is not able to detect linguistic phenomena such as irony.
But science is advancing, and with it, all the projects that are currently underway are certainly advancing. We hope to see this particular software in action and enjoy the results.
