Skip to main content

The end of child pornography? Google’s new web crawler could help

Internet giants like Facebook and Google have long aided in the fight against child pornography, and now, another technological weapon is being added to the government’s arsenal. Google has created a so-called “web crawler” that finds and identifies child pornography, helping the police and federal officials remove images of abuse from the Internet.

As per a new report released by the Internet Watch Foundation, Google’s new tool takes “individual child sexual abuse image codes,” and searches for such images across the web. Illegal content is then blocked from being uploaded or removed in a process that experts say is much more efficient than alternate practices. “The exciting bit is that the web crawler could make it much quicker to identify and remove hashed images,” the IWF report reads. “It will allow any duplicate images to be removed or blocked, and ease the burden on analysts, as they won’t have to see so many disturbing images.”

Recommended Videos

The web crawler is just one component of a larger project overseen by the “Googler in Residence” program of the IWF. The Silicon Valley-based company has an engineer dedicated to assisting the Foundation with its efforts, and both organizations seem optimistic about future innovations their partnership may facilitate.

“[The web crawler] could be a real game changer,” the Foundation said in its report. “This is hugely important for the victims of child sex abuse, as this technology should block thousands of their illegal images from being viewed on the internet.” While the tool remains in its nascent, pilot stages, the implications of this work could herald the beginning of the end of child porn on the web.

“By harnessing our engineering expertise through the Googler in Residence program, (the foundation’s) skilled analysts have made amazing progress in identifying and then removing this illegal content from the web,” said Katie O’Donovan, a public policy manager for Google in the U.K. “We look forward to the next phase of the Googler in Residence project in 2016.”

Lulu Chang
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
Google’s new Gemma 3 AI models are fast, frugal, and ready for phones
Google Gemma 3 open-source AI model on a tablet.

Google’s AI efforts are synonymous with Gemini, which has now become an integral element of its most popular products across the Worksuite software and hardware, as well. However, the company has also released multiple open-source AI models under the Gemma label for over a year now.

Today, Google revealed its third generation open-source AI models with some impressive claims in tow. The Gemma 3 models come in four variants — 1 billion, 4 billion, 12 billion, and 27 billion parameters — and are designed to run on devices ranging from smartphones to beefy workstations.
Ready for mobile devices

Read more
Google Taara could deliver internet at the speed of light
A beam of light.

Everyone knows the woes of slow internet connection speeds, but the Google Taara chip could provide Internet to previously unreachable areas — and at speeds of up to 20Gbps per second. This project has been in development for years, but the team behind it just announced the next-generation Taara chip.

Taara is a silicon photonic chip, which is a technical way of saying it transmits data through the air using beams of light. The original version of Taara worked, but it had limitations — namely, the complicated series of mirrors and hardware needed to adjust the direction of the beam. The new version utilizes advanced software to steer the beam.

Read more
Google employees are testing new AI Mode search feature
AI Overviews being shown in Google Search.

Google is working on integrating more AI features into its search engine. The company is now having its U.S. employees test a new feature called “AI Mode.” 

The publication 9to5 Google uncovered an internal email detailing that employees had been invited to dogfood (test), the AI Mode, which is intended to be a form of intelligent search embedded within Google Search. The feature adds “easy-to-digest breakdowns with links to explore content across the web.”

Read more