Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. The
Speaker 1: E Safety Commissioner Julie Van Grant says one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Australians a month have access to an app that allows
Speaker 1: users to upload images of other people, including miners, to
Speaker 1: receive a depiction of what they would look like naked.
Speaker 1: Predators themselves are found to share know how to produce
Speaker 1: and spread these images and in Australia, the AA tools
Speaker 1: used to create the material are not illegal and all
Speaker 1: the while, Julia Imman Grant says, not a single major
Speaker 1: tech company has expressed shame or regret for their role
Speaker 1: in enabling it all. Today, advocate for survivors of sexual
Speaker 1: assault and director of the Grace Tame Foundation, Grace Tame
Speaker 1: on how governments and law enforcement should be thinking about
Speaker 1: AI and child abuse and whether tech companies will cooperate.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, September eleventh, and just a warning, the following
Speaker 1: episode contains details of child sexual exploitation. So Grace, it's
Speaker 1: Child Protection Week and at the Grace Time Foundation, you've
Speaker 1: been focused on AI and the potential harms and the
Speaker 1: risks for children. So to begin with, tell me why AI.
Speaker 1: While you're looking at that in particular.
Speaker 2: Well, technology has always been used to facilitate child sexual abuse,
Speaker 2: and child sex offenders.
Speaker 3: Are often among the early adopters self.
Speaker 2: We go back to nineteen eighty six when the then
Speaker 2: US Attorney General did a commission on pornography.
Speaker 3: In their final report.
Speaker 2: They stated very clearly that child sex offenders were using
Speaker 2: computer networks to trade child sexual abuse material, but also
Speaker 2: to network with each other, share tactics of abuse and
Speaker 2: procuring children. In the realm of safeguarding children, there's always
Speaker 2: been a concern about technology, and as we're seeing in
Speaker 2: recent years that technology is becoming more advanced. So if
Speaker 2: we look at even just chatbots, where you can trick
Speaker 2: a chatbot into generating descriptive child exploitation material, you can
Speaker 2: use a chatbot to give you advice on how to
Speaker 2: evade detection. You can ask it what it might do
Speaker 2: or what might be the best course of action. You know,
Speaker 2: in the case of actually being confronted by law enforcement,
Speaker 2: what are the first things that you should say to
Speaker 2: you know, mitigate any potential punishment. Then when it comes
Speaker 2: to tools that are able to generate images, we're seeing instantaneous,
Speaker 2: prolific creation of very realistic abuse material.
Speaker 3: And contrary to.
Speaker 2: Myth that this is harmless, all of these programs that
Speaker 2: generate images or videos have actually been trained on photographs
Speaker 2: of real children, if not existing child exploitation material. You know,
Speaker 2: when we look at, for example, the nature of the
Speaker 2: images that are being generated, that are becoming more and
Speaker 2: more creative, and you know, it's a very low barrier
Speaker 2: to entry for a lot of these programs. Whereas you know,
Speaker 2: if you're producing child exploitation material in the traditional sense,
Speaker 2: you know you would actually have to film real child
Speaker 2: exploitation material, you would potentially edit it and then distribute it,
Speaker 2: whereas now it's a few clicks to prompt programs that
Speaker 2: are capable of learning to generate this material and then
Speaker 2: spread it far and wide.
Speaker 4: You can download an immature two of your classmate, and
Speaker 4: for five cases this is a girls or women. You
Speaker 4: put it into the online website and it generates a
Speaker 4: deep nude, so an accurate depiction of what that person
Speaker 4: would look like naked.
Speaker 1: And this is something that Australia is Easafety Commissioner recently
Speaker 1: pointed out as an area of particular concern just how
Speaker 1: prolific the use of these apps is.
Speaker 3: We have any sense of how many Australian children or
Speaker 3: young people have used.
Speaker 4: It for these particular sites that we're taking action against,
Speaker 4: we know at least one hundred thousand visits. It's a month,
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand visits a month from Australia.
Speaker 1: So what is the legal landscape here and how much
Speaker 1: power does law enforcement have in what sounds like a
Speaker 1: very rapidly changing space.
Speaker 2: Well, there is low hanging fruit for governance for legislators
Speaker 2: to pick off, such as apps like Newdify, apps whose
Speaker 2: sole purpose is nefarious. There's no good intention behind an
Speaker 2: app that is designed to remove.
Speaker 3: The clothing of a clothed.
Speaker 2: Photograph of someone without their consent, presumably, so you know, outlawering.
Speaker 3: Those sorts of apps.
Speaker 2: But it is very hard to keep up because whereas
Speaker 2: in the past with the development and release of technologies,
Speaker 2: there's sort of be a kind of a minimum time
Speaker 2: frame where you could expect something to become publicly available,
Speaker 2: but there's no limits, now there's no or there's very
Speaker 2: few limits, and the technology itself is becoming smarter and
Speaker 2: smarter and faster and faster. So it's very hard for
Speaker 2: legislators to keep up. We need safety by design. We
Speaker 2: need safeguards built into publicly available AI tools or online
Speaker 2: spaces in general in.
Speaker 3: Terms of actually enforcing the law.
Speaker 2: In terms of detecting crime, it becomes a case of
Speaker 2: needing to fight fire with fire. It becomes a case
Speaker 2: of needing to empower law enforcement with the relevant AI
Speaker 2: software to combat these AI rms. We need victim id
Speaker 2: tools available to law enforcement, tools that also can be
Speaker 2: applied to the reviewing process of child exploitation material to
Speaker 2: be able to discern whether it is quote unquote real
Speaker 2: or has been generated by a computer. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a complex and it's a rapidly shifting space.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to all of these apps, this tech,
Speaker 1: the default is that they are legal until they're not.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to legislation around this, where does
Speaker 1: Australia sit globally?
Speaker 2: Australia is once a front runner in certain areas and
Speaker 2: then in others we lag. And some of that has
Speaker 2: to do with our privacy laws. Is particularly what we
Speaker 2: were just talking about before in terms of the limitations
Speaker 2: of law enforcement here to actually use victim identification tools
Speaker 2: to speed up the process of you know, otherwise very
Speaker 2: drawn out investigations but in terms of legislating the use
Speaker 2: of and the possession of certain AI tools that are
Speaker 2: used for nefarious purposes, Australia is I think stepping in
Speaker 2: the right direction there. There's obviously so much work to
Speaker 2: be done. It's difficult when we consider the bigger picture
Speaker 2: of the global system in which we are currently operating,
Speaker 2: which is essentially a techno feudal system where you know,
Speaker 2: even governments have no option, essentially a but to buy
Speaker 2: in and it's really the tech industry that is able
Speaker 2: to wield so much power and control.
Speaker 3: Coming up?
Speaker 1: Will governments worldwide stand up to tech companies.
Speaker 5: Let's get some more now on that national roundtable in
Speaker 5: Parliament House where child safety advocates have been discussing the
Speaker 5: threat artificial intelligence poses to child safety. Former Australian of
Speaker 5: the Year and advocate for Survivors of child sexual abuse,
Speaker 5: Grace Tame has been calling on the government to prevent AI.
Speaker 1: Being used to create child abuse material.
Speaker 6: You recently attended around table at Parliament House which was
Speaker 6: around discussing child safety online including AI abuse material. Can
Speaker 6: you tell me a bit about how that went and
Speaker 6: whether or not you get the sense that this government
Speaker 6: is taking the issue as seriously as it should.
Speaker 2: I think it should be commended that we're able to
Speaker 2: have these discussions that bring together a combination of politicians,
Speaker 2: of people who work in the tech industry.
Speaker 3: Of law enforcement, lawyers.
Speaker 2: Child safety advocates, academics who are all essentially working towards
Speaker 2: the same end, and that is keeping children safe from harm.
Speaker 2: I find it hard sometimes not to be cynical. You know,
Speaker 2: we've gone I think broad on change, broad on education
Speaker 2: and awareness raising of the potential harms and the very
Speaker 2: real harms faced by children both on and offline, but
Speaker 2: we haven't gone deeper. I am always struck when I
Speaker 2: have conversations with everyday people who don't work in safe
Speaker 2: guiding children.
Speaker 3: I'm always struck by how little they know, which is to.
Speaker 2: Everyone's detriment and it's to the benefit of perpetrators. I
Speaker 2: don't think that we, really, generally speaking, in the broader population,
Speaker 2: have an appropriate level of awareness of just how a
Speaker 2: dark this world is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean.
Speaker 1: It's obviously a complex thing to tackle, but specifically, what
Speaker 1: would you like to see from the Australian government.
Speaker 2: So obviously there's been a lot of hype around consent
Speaker 2: education and respectful relationships education rollouts in recent years, and
Speaker 2: while I think they are significant and important milestones, the
Speaker 2: next step is for grooming prevention education that is not
Speaker 2: just targeted towards children, but targeted towards parents, teachers, childcare workers,
Speaker 2: essentially anyone who has a duty of care to a
Speaker 2: young person. And the reason for that is that grooming
Speaker 2: is a highly specialized stratagem of preparing an environment for
Speaker 2: child's actually be used to take place in play in sight,
Speaker 2: and it is, you know, in some ways parallel to
Speaker 2: other forms of non contact offending, but it is very
Speaker 2: specific to the context of adults harming children, and it
Speaker 2: has been conflated in the process of developing these other
Speaker 2: types of harm prevention programs. It has been dangerously conflated
Speaker 2: again to the benefit of perpetrators who really thrive off
Speaker 2: social confusion.
Speaker 3: So I would like to see grooming.
Speaker 2: Prevention education as the next key focus area in terms
Speaker 2: of prevention.
Speaker 3: Broad education will not tick that box.
Speaker 2: It needs to be highly specialized because we're up against
Speaker 2: a high specialized cohort of offenders that's often deliberately harm children,
Speaker 2: and there's also the opportunity to criminalize the possession of
Speaker 2: certain apps that are clearly solely designed to cause harm.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the power that the tech industry wields.
Speaker 1: Given that, what sense do you get of how successful
Speaker 1: governments can be in getting their cooperation in changing the
Speaker 1: products that they make.
Speaker 2: We've seen very little action on the part of governments
Speaker 2: worldwide to actually stand up to these tech companies that
Speaker 2: are producing products that they.
Speaker 3: Know are used to harm children. You know, with encryption.
Speaker 2: Now embedded in even platforms like Facebook, we're seeing offenders
Speaker 2: grooming children on these platforms and going undetected because there's
Speaker 2: no way to find these conversations.
Speaker 3: Then when it comes to tools.
Speaker 2: That are able to generate images, it is capable obviously.
Speaker 3: Of creating things that don't exist in real life.
Speaker 2: So this ceiling of depravity that reality has doesn't exist online.
Speaker 3: And then the concern.
Speaker 2: Is as well that if you're getting individuals who are
Speaker 2: producing and consuming this ever more depraved material, that when
Speaker 2: they do actually come into contact with a child that
Speaker 2: they are intending to harm, that they are going to,
Speaker 2: you know, push those limits of violence even further because
Speaker 2: they have been desensitized to you know, a quote unquote
Speaker 2: normal boundaries of interaction, but profit is the big motivator
Speaker 2: a certainly over protection.
Speaker 1: Well, Grace, thank you for taking the time to talk
Speaker 1: to me about all of this today.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on and Ruby, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Australia has condemned an Israeli
Speaker 1: strike on Harmas targets in Qatar that killed six people,
Speaker 1: including the son of Hamas's exiled Gaza chief and top negotiator.
Speaker 1: Qatar is a security partner of the United States and
Speaker 1: has acted as a mediator alongside Egypt in ceasefire talks
Speaker 1: between Israel and Tamas for a ceasefire in Gaza. Hamas
Speaker 1: has described the attack as an attempt to assassinate the
Speaker 1: group's ceasefire negotiation team. Foreign Minister Penny Wong says the
Speaker 1: strike risks an escalation of conflict in the region, and
Speaker 1: the Victorian government has said it will offer financial support
Speaker 1: to businesses in the town of Porapunka as the search
Speaker 1: for alleged gunman Desmond Freeman continues. The details have yet
Speaker 1: to be formally announced. Split premieres Into Allen says the
Speaker 1: community has been carrying a heavy burden since Freeman allegedly
Speaker 1: shot two police officers prompting warnings to the public to
Speaker 1: stay away from the area. I'm Ruby Jones. This is
Speaker 1: seven am. Thanks for listening.