A vital new resource in the fight against child sexual abuse material

This is a guest blog written by Google for WeProtect Global Alliance

Cross-sector collaboration is at the very core of how we address online child safety at Google. It’s why we are a proud member of WeProtect Global Alliance, and it’s why today we’re pleased to announce a significant update to our Child Safety Toolkit. Our Toolkit is a free suite of AI-powered technologies designed to help tech companies and other eligible partners, like hotlines, more efficiently detect, prioritise, and remove child sexual abuse material from the internet.

In partnership with the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), we have launched new Pubertal Assessment Guidelines to help our partners make more accurate and consistent determinations, and by doing so, set a new industry standard in the fight against child sexual abuse material (CSAM). 

Our hope is that this resource paves the way for evidenced-based consistency across industry that is expert-informed, free of charge, and designed to support the broader ecosystem. 

Expanding the Toolkit for Manual Reviewers

For years, Google’s Child Safety Toolkit has offered qualifying partners free access to two powerful APIs to help prioritize content for review: Content Safety API for unknown images and videos and CSAI Match for known videos.

While these tools help partners identify which files need attention first, we recognised a gap in the resources available for the next critical step: manual review. These new guidelines fill that gap that by offering:

• Evidence-Based Accuracy: They are designed to make pubertal assessments as accurate as possible using a clinical evidence base provided by RCPCH’s expert reference group.
• Medical vs. Non-Medical Differentiation: They provide the necessary information to distinguish as accurately as possible between medical and non-medical content.
• Standardised Review: They serve as a critical part of manual review considerations – helping both Google analysts and analysts across the ecosystem make informed decisions on complex content.
• Inclusive and Global Guidance: They consider biological and cultural variations when assessing physical characteristics during pubertal development. 

Why This Matters

We’ve heard from partners that CSAM pubertal assessment is an area where many struggle, and comprehensive research was previously unavailable. The RCPCH’s clinical expert reference group, composed of consultant paediatricians and endocrinologists from across the UK, led the critical revision of these pubertal assessment guidelines. A unified standard based on these updated, free, and evidence-based guidelines will help the entire ecosystem with more accurate and actionable reports. 

For Google, this initiative reinforces our commitment to the online child safety community and to WeProtect Global Alliance, by leading with transparency and sharing our advancements with the wider ecosystem. 

Learn More

Visit protectingchildren.google to learn more about Google’s Child Safety Toolkit and how it may help your organisation.