Chatbots Help Foil The Attempts Of Sex Traffickers

Sex trafficking is a pretty huge deal and one that many law enforcement agencies around the world and various organizations are trying to put a stop to. However, it looks like at least temporarily, might have foiled the efforts of sex traffickers, thanks to the work of a non-profit group that employed the use of chatbots.

These chatbots posed as sex workers online and connected with people who responded to a fake ad online. The bots ultimately delivered a message of deterrence to the people who wanted to purchase sex, as well as buying more than 2 million Google ads warning people about the risks of buying sex online.

It is said that this has led to a 50% decline in online searches for keywords such as “teen escort”. According to Robert Beiser, former executive director at Seattle Against Slavery, he was quoted as saying, “In a fairly short length of time we were able to reach hundreds of thousands of people who had searched for common terms. In Seattle, we were able to impact the marketplace pretty dramatically.”

While we’re not sure if this would actually permanently disrupt the sex trafficking industry, at the very least it might have put a slight pause on it and maybe made some potential customers rethink their decisions.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence)