North Texas hosts Crimes Against Children Conference as digital threats rise; experts warn about AI risks, education strategies
Hosted by the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center, it's the largest event of its kind.
Thousands of law enforcement officers, social workers, and child advocates from across the world are learning how to stay ahead of the threats and support victims in crisis.
President and CEO Irish Burch says when it comes to crimes against children, most cases involve someone the child knows.
Additionally, as the digital world expands, so does the number of potential threats.
"I would tell you the greatest danger that our children are facing is technology, the advancement of technology," she said.
One major topic is artificial intelligence.
"Anything about AI makes it easier to groom children," she said. "The perpetrator, it's not just their job to groom a child, it's their job to groom a community."
Through their podcast "Catfish Cops," two North Texas officers with extensive experience in internet crimes against children are working to educate the public.
"From a technology standpoint, it has advanced 10x, maybe 100x, from where it was," host Tony Godwin said. "It has slid into the arena that we work, child sex abuse material, and it's a very big problem."
"It's common for us to see offenders taking real children, pictures of real children who are not involved in any sort of abusive situation, and then using AI to create child sex abuse material," Host Brandon Poor said. "So that is common, but not nearly as common as people may think it is yet."
What's coming next, they say, could be even harder to stop.
"We haven't even seen the problem it's going to become, I think," Poor said.
"How to verify an AI-generated image versus a real image. That's the complexity I think we are going to face in law enforcement, even more in the next few years... is this a real child or is this an AI-generated child, and if so, how can we charge those if it's not."
That's why they believe education is just as critical as enforcement. They offer a variety of resources for parents through their website.
"If we can take the prey away from the predators, that's how we stop this," Poor said.
"This is not the time to be your child's best friend in the sense of saying I don't want to ask my child about their phone and their apps and the things that they're using," Burch said. "You need to really come from a place of curiosity."
She say the best thing you can do is ask questions and stay involved.
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