In this illustration taken on March 29, 2021, headphones are seen in front of the Discord app logo displayed.
Dice Ruvik | Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO — The popular chat platform is changing and clarifying its child safety policies, including around teen dating and AI-generated child sexual abuse material, Discord’s director of trust and safety said Tuesday, a statement made in NBC News Investigation Child safety issues were discussed on the platform last month.
Discord is expanding its policies to address generative AI, according to John Redgrave, Discord’s vice president of trust and safety can create fake content And the sexualization of children, specifically banning AI depictions of child sexual abuse and even the sexualization of children in text chats. Washington post In June, it reported that artificial intelligence-generated images of child pornography had proliferated on the internet in recent months.
Discord has been a community hub dedicated to creating AI-generated imagery, and hosts several integrations that allow user-generated imagery. Sexually themed images are often created on these servers.
The company said in a statement blog post Announces that the updated Child Sexual Abuse Material Policy will include “any text or media content that sexualizes a child, including drawn, realistic and AI-generated realistic child sexual abuse material. The goal of this update is to ensure that child sexual abuse Children in any context of the material are not normalized by bad actors.”
Redgrave also said the company is working on policy changes and clarifications to explicitly ban teen dating, which experts previously told NBC News presents significant opportunities for adults seeking to exploit or develop children.
Discord wrote in its blog post: “In this context, we also believe that online dating can lead to self-harm. Under this policy, teen dating servers are banned from the platform and we will take action against users who engage in this behavior “.
Speaking at TrustCon, a conference for trust and safety professionals in San Francisco, Redgrave said the company sees such online relationships as a major risk to young people.
“We will no longer allow teens to date on our platform, as we recognize this is a significant harm vector for predators going after teens,” he said.
Guidelines for Discord has said the company will “remove spaces that encourage or facilitate dating between teens”. in June, NBC News Investigation Hundreds of Discord servers were found that appeared to promote child abuse content, while others billed themselves as teen or child dating servers soliciting nude photos from minors. Additionally, NBC News identified 35 cases over the past six years in which adults have been prosecuted for kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault, allegedly involving communications on Discord.
NBC News also uncovered 165 other cases, including four alleged criminal rings in which adults transmitted or received child sexual abuse material via Discord, or allegedly used the platform to blackmail children into sending sexual images of themselves (also known as sextortion). ) were prosecuted.
Redgrave noted that the company is also updating its policy to prohibit older teens from soliciting younger teens. “Older teens involved in grooming young teens will be reviewed and acted upon in accordance with our Child Sexual Misconduct and Grooming Policy,” the company said in a blog post.
As part of a policy update, Discord announced more parental control tools.in a new home center toolsparents and children can choose to allow parents to receive updates on their children’s activities on the platform.
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