About Stella Polaris

The scale of child sexual abuse is both massive and elusive. The internet enables criminals to coordinate in networks, facilitates the rapid dissemination of child sexual abuse material, and has created new ways of exploiting children. For example, perpetrators “request” specific serious child abuse via live streaming. Perpetrators use anonymity through encryption and online groups where their behavior is normalized, e.g., by sharing advice on how to commit abuse without being detected. Traditional efforts to prevent and detect child abuse have not made sufficient use of existing technological developments and know-how.

Today, AI tools exist that search the web for known child abuse images and can identify victims and perpetrators. However, these solutions are neither sufficient nor coordinated. It is difficult for police, civil society and researchers to keep up to date and understand how different tools complement each other. In addition, research and methodological developments in the field of AI have so far not been sufficiently used to prevent child sexual abuse. We also see a strong need to involve experts on issues such as trauma, sexual abuse and children's online behaviour in the development of new tools. Both to ensure that the tools will actually be useful and also to avoid them harming or restricting children's rights.

The AI hub's main target group is children who are at risk of being - or have already been - sexually abused. To support and empower children, knowledge and tools are also needed for parents and other important adults close to the child. We also want to explore solutions that can help those working to identify and help children who have been victimized.

The AI Hub will bring together actors who do not usually work together and whose expertise is needed to use technological advances to protect and empower children. We want to enable closer interaction between police, prosecutors and child rights actors on the one hand and AI experts, programmers, researchers and tech companies on the other. The AI hub's knowledge centre will also be accessible to students, researchers, and industry who want to approach the topic so that existing solutions can benefit more people and new development initiatives can build on what already exists. We want to continue to contribute to increased engagement and interest in the subject and an even stronger network of relevant actors. Through targeted actions, Stella Polaris can accelerate the development of concrete solutions to the most pressing challenges.

Although child abuse is a global problem, we believe there is untapped potential in creating local networks where people get to know each other well and can develop concrete solutions. This can be done without waiting to see what the big tech companies should do or what legislation needs to be changed. Our ambition is to create change with the resources available within Sweden's borders, but we will also use the broad international network we collectively possess both to continuously take in what is happening globally and to share the lessons from Stella Polaris.

Stella Polaris has a number of overarching strategies to achieve our goal. We want to:

• contribute to a greater awareness and use of existing solutions by relevant stakeholders
• identify bottlenecks and problems in the work against sexual abuse where AI can be part of the solution
• inspire and engage actors skilled in AI in the work against child sexual abuse so that new research and developments in AI can be applied to these issues as well
• test and explore new AI-based solutions and tools
• contribute new knowledge through studies on issues where there is a lack of understanding or by gathering relevant expertise on a particular issue
• regularly invite to cross-sectoral meetings, seminars and events to establish an active network for knowledge sharing