SAN JOSE, Calif., May 22, 2021 — CyberPurify, a startup specializing in using Machine Learning to identify harmful content, has just launched a free solution called CyberPurify Kids to help parents around the globe create a safe online environment for their kids in just a few clicks.
Binh Nguyen_CyberPurify
Demands for such content filtering for kids continue to rise as with the growth of 5G, smartphones and social networks, there are 4.66 billion Internet users in the world, on average, each person generates 1.7 GB of data per day, equivalent to 2,000 photos or 150 videos, and it will continue to increase in the future, leading to massive content needs to be moderated before it reaches large children.
Among them, harmful content is so pervasive that 11 is the average age that kids have come across pornography, some are as young as 7 or 8. More than 60% of 11 to 13-year-olds are unintentionally exposed to pornography online, most of which describe the feeling as "awful" and "confused", causing the most negative feelings, especially for children under 10.*
The period under 10 is when children interact and explore with the outside world, so they are easy to imitate and be influenced by negative factors. Harmful content such as accident images, gore, animal abuse, violence, and especially pornography can make children uncomfortable, confused, and obsessive in the future.
In terms of pornography alone, they are not only in the form of websites but also images/videos/advertisements appearing on online gaming sites, social networks, forums, group chats, etc.
That’s why CyberPurify comes into play. The product runs a deep learning model on the browser to identify and blur 15 types of harmful content, including pornographic, horrifying, drugs and alcohol, hate speech content.
Parents shouldn’t and don’t need to over-monitor what kids do online
"Invading children’s privacy by monitoring what they do, what they see will negatively affect their personalities and family relationship. In the past, parents faced a dilemma of letting their kids be harmed by cyber dangers, or seriously invading their private spaces with traditional nanny software," said Binh Nguyen, founder & CEO, also a dad with two children.
"We focus on building an AI model that enhances the identification and classification of harmful content, redefining the concept of child safety by using AI in real-time recognition even when the content is not displayed. It is as if you have given your child a loyal guardian who does not judge or scrutinize the private life, it will be a true companion to each child in the journey of discovering the Internet," he added.
Using the product is simple. Parents just install CyberPurify Kids in the store containing the browser extension/add-on. Every time their child accesses the Internet, CyberPurify will automatically analyze the displayed content, blur it if it is harmful, or send a report to parents when detecting that a child learns about drugs or substances. When the child tries to remove this filter, the parents will also be notified.
CyberPurify is like a child
"The special thing about CyberPurify Kids is that it is like a child, constantly learning more harmful content it discovers every day to become smarter, preventing content in the future. This is the world’s first product running on a browser that can recognize almost all kinds of harmful content that exist on the Internet," Mr. Binh added.
Along with running CyberPurify, Mr. Binh was the founder and CEO of Applancer TopDev invested by SaraminHR, a company listed on KOSDAQ in Korea.
"At the beginning of 2021, I left Applancer TopDev to focus all my time on developing CyberPurify Kids because the right time has come, most browsers support running AI and this is the perfect time for us to bring a strong identity on the server to the browser, serve more people," Mr. Binh said.
Mr. Binh is also widely known as a pioneer in the application of AI to identify pornography called KillPorn, which has been widely used in net rooms and homes since 2007. After achieving an award from the "Vietnamese Talent Award", he gave a license as a gift to VNPT so VNPT can provide the service to the Internet subscribers of this network operator under the name MegaKillPorn.
In the past, CyberPurify provided B2B services to digital content providers/ platforms as a human replacement tool for automatic content censorship for user-generated content. It is currently processing over 10 million images and video content per day, equivalent to 20,000 workers.
According to the representative, besides 15 types of content (pornography, horrifying, drugs/alcohol and hate speech), CyberPurify Kids also prevents malware, scamming sites and viruses.
CyberPurify is one of 5 winning startups at AI Accelerator Challenge 2021 (AAC 2021) powered by the Vietnam Ministry of Science & Technology and Australian’s Government.
CyberPurify Kids is provided for free to schools, labs, internet cafes or places with public computers. It is available as an extension/ add-on on browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox and Safari. Advanced features include sending statistical reports to parents for $9/ month, and $99/ year.
(*) BBFC, n.d. New research commissioned by the BBFC into the impact of pornography on children demonstrates significant support for age-verification [pdf]. Available at <https://darkroom.bbfc.co.uk/original/afbb24f1c54ba176b01a6eeba58b5b8c:4fcba53db7eeba09f2973e6e88289601/bbfc-research-into-children-and-pornography-2019.pdf>