Safety Tech Challenge Fund - Asha Anderson (dragonflAI) video transcript

Hi, I'm Asha Anderson. I'm the CEO and co-founder of DragonflAI.

The project that we took part in was the Safety Tech Challenge Fund. We collaborated with Yoti, who are a digital identity company. We developed an on-device moderation tool within an end-to-end encryption system. This was done by combining our machine learning model that detects nudity, and Yoti’s age estimation model.

The objective of the project for us was to develop and test the product that would identify unknown child sexual abuse material content within an end-to-end encrypted model within a reasonable timeframe.

Without this challenge I’m not sure how quickly and easily we would have been able to explore the feasibility of combining both the models – both our age estimation and the nudity element – in such a robust way.

We also believe that this challenge has pushed the UK safety tech industry forward as a whole, as we have all had a chance (all the partners that worked together) have had a chance to test and trial out the cutting-edge technology, which will be increasingly necessary in the digital world going forward, which has been fantastic for us.

The Challenge Fund has given us a unique opportunity to work with partners that are experts in different categories of machine learning. It's also given us the opportunity to network and establish relationships with people from the same industry and opens up potential discussions about future collaborations.