Imagine that at any time of the day around 750.000 men (mostly Western) are looking for online webcam sex with children. This webcam sex tourism is growing rapidly due to increasing popularity of Internet and mobile phones in developing countries. If nothing is done, it is expected to develop into a global industry!
For several years ‘Terre des Hommes’, an organization situated in the Netherlands that works towards a world where children are no longer exploited, has been doing research in order to create awareness on this problem and prevent the growth. After several years of research they introduced Sweetie in 2013. Sweetie is a 10-year-old fictional character from the Philippines. Sweetie is a computer model, made piece by piece by capturing the movements of a real person and applying them onto here. By using a virtual reality application they control her movements. By tracking down the information given by the men on sources such as Google and Facebook they can identify these paedophiles without hacking into their computers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTSDqsQcN2I
Watch this video to see how ‘Sweetie’ works
The outcome of the research was shocking! Terre des Hommes identified over 1000 offenders of webcam sex with children in just two months. Followed by this huge success the United Nations put the subject on the agenda of the Human Rights, Police experts approached the organization with questions about the method of investigation and the first arrests took place. As you can read a proactive approach works and the use of virtual reality technology has influenced the prevention of the webcam child sex industry heavily, thereby it disrupted the investigation methods used by the Police.
Unfortunately, the problem has not been solved structurally, these criminals still find their way. Therefore, Terre des Hommes is, in cooperation with Tracksinspector and supported by international specialists and sponsors, developing a new advanced software that can be implemented worldwide: Sweetie 2.0. The most innovative function of the Sweetie 2.0 software is the use of a personified chat robot (chatbot), which enables Sweetie to actually engage in a dialogue and recognize online paedophiles by the way of responses. So, the disruptive technology continues!
Watch this video to see how ‘Sweetie 2.0’ works
The results of this new software are not yet published but I expect this software and the disruptive technology to put a stop to the growth of this industry eventually! Due to the alignment with national and international frameworks for investigation and prosecution, the worldwide collaboration is possible and Sweetie 2.0 will make the difference!
Very interesting read! Sex tourism always has been a big topic and especially since it is expected to be a global industry. There was never an easy way to identify any offenders. However, now there finally is a way and it probably will develop even further in the future with Sweetie 2.0 as you mentioned.
The principle to identify these offenders lies on a really basic idea the police uses more often; they just lay a simple trap and the offenders fall right for it. To give you an example: sometimes the police just leaves a car with the keys inside and then arrest whoever attempts to ‘steal’ the car. What I find interesting in this part is, is that the only reason Sweety was able to be created is, because of the ongoing development of technology. The same is true for Sweety 2.0.
However, I am wondering about the accuracy of Sweety 2.0. How can a robot talk as a ten year old little girl? In other words, won’t it be easy for offenders to identify who is a fake and who is not a fake? Does it use any kind of artificial intelligence to become better and better at conversing with the offenders? Next to that, on what kind of scale do I have to imagine Sweety 2.0. Will there be more Sweety’s than there will be real children? Otherwise it will be hard to get ‘in touch’ with offenders. On the other hand, this will stop offenders in their tracks, which is the primary goal of the development of Sweety, so in my opinion there should just be a lot of Sweety’s so offenders know there is a high chance of getting caught. Hopefully, this leads to less sex tourism.
In your blogpost you state that you think that the growth of the industry will be stopped by Sweety, however in the second movie you posted the video states that they want to reduce all the offenders to 0. Do you think this is possible? My gut feeling says it’s never possible to catch them all, especially keeping in mind that offenders might be able to identify Sweety as well either by experience or by another technology to notice the ‘fakeness’. Nevertheless, I think Sweety is a great concept and I hope Sweety 2.0 will get implemented as soon as possible.
Good morning Sarah,
Thank you for this interesting post, I did not know about project Sweetie 2 (or Sweetie) before.
Imagining that around 750.000 men each day are looking for ways to have webcamsex with children, is something horrible and almost unbelievable. And the fact that Terre Des Hommes has used disruptive technologies and it’s IT resources to help stop this abuse, restores faith in humanity a little.
The fact that Sweetie tracks down information given by these paedophiles without illegally hacking their computers, makes that police can actually use their information to build a case around potential suspects.
The side-effect of Sweetie is that it creates awares about these practices within the population, the United Nations, Police organizations and people like you and me are triggered by Terre des Hommes fight against child abuse.
Hopeflully, this awareness has the positive effects of ‘scaring off’ potential offenders in the first place.
By introducing Sweetie 2.0, both Terre des Hommes and partner firms show that they keep using IT innovations in order to improve their methods. By automating Sweetie, its network reach increases signifiantly. I do expect and hope that by contantly updating their algorithm, project Sweetie 2.0 has the potential to significantly decrease the online paedophile network!
Jaimy Siegersma
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for this thought-provoking post, I remember hearing about the Sweetie (1) project a few years ago and reading some articles about it. It disgusted me how rich men exploit their power over innocent girls and I remember how happy I was to see a start of a (potential) solution. This happiness only grew when statistics came in on the success of the project in just a short amount of time.
So when I randomly saw your post on the blog I was immediately drawn to it. I think it is great you bring attention to this horrible phenomenon and show that there is hope of reducing its frequency. Also it creates awareness of the fact that there are people who make fortunes out of children being sexually exploited.
However, you can debate about the fact whether the ‘evidence’ gathered by Sweetie will hold up in court. Of course general sense tells you that if someone offers Sweetie money to pose naked in front of a webcam, the chances of him offering this to ‘real’ children are enormous. But since Sweetie is not a real child, was there really a case of exploitation? This of course differs from country to country but is a factor that needs to be considered when evaluating these kind of initiatives.
I think the major achievement Sweetie has done is raise awareness of child exploitation. However a lot still needs to be done on the side of law enforcement to catch up to the technologies these men use to commit these crimes.
Iris van der Heijden