A Cork secondary school student has developed a child grooming detection app for social media which she unveiled at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition
17 year-old Anne O'Donovan a student at Coláiste Choilm in Ballincollig got her first mobile phone four years ago and was shocked when she was contacted by adults online
She was determined to use her experience to help protect children online in future and has now developed a ChatGPT powered app which will detect if an adult is speaking to a child online or if inappropriate language is being used.
Speaking on the Neil Prendeville Show Anne says the system could alert parents to a specific danger
"So both the child and the parent get the alert because I feel the child needs to learn when they are in danger themselves. There is an avatar up on the screen and that changes and hopefully if I could ever get the funding to make this an app, it would be animated and it would wave at them and the child would get a notification. The parent also gets a notification on their phone to tell them that their child is in danger"
