Recently, the issue of child sexual abuse is discussed a lot. Many people are producing Child Sexual Abuse Material(CSAM) and are consuming it. Also, in South Korea, there was a huge crime related to CSAM. So, to stop child sexual abuse and related crimes, Apple is going to institute a new technology, but some people opposed it.

▲ A picture of Apple Inc.

Child Sexual Abuse Material(CSAM) is a video or a photo that involves child sexual abuse. A lot of crimes regarding child sexual abuse are taking place recently. Many people are making CSAM and sell it to other people. People who bought it and store it on their phones. So, to stop CSAM, Apple decided to institute a new technology that scans the user's phone, detecting CSAM photos or videos and report them. The technology uses hashing. Neural AI learns about this Children's Sexual Abuse Material and makes hashes for it. Then, they find the photos in our phone that have similar hashes of CSAM.

▲ A picture of CSAM detecting program.

Many critics say that the new technology promotes an invasion of privacy. It is because Apple can see our photos and scan them. Apple's new technology is basically scanning and learning about our photos and increasing accuracy. So, it means Apple is going to scan all our photos and make their neural technology more powerful. Also, it means that Apple can control our photos and privacy. About these matters, Apple answered that they will not learn anything about the images that do not match the known CSAM database. Also, they said they will not scan photos and videos that are not stored in iCloud. However, they also said that we cannot check whether our photos were scanned or which photos we have were reported as CSAM contents by Apple.

Some people say that Apple's new technology could be an invasion of privacy. It is possible and it could cause a privacy problem. However, this new technology will be very helpful to stop producing and consuming CSAM, and many crimes related to childhood sexual abuse will decrease.

By Minseok Kang