With the rapid development of the Internet, the problem has grown. In the US, tech companies reported 45 million photos and videos of child abuse in 2018, according to a review by the New York Times.
It has become increasingly easy to manufacture, disseminate and hide material with sexual abuse of children with the help of encryption and cloud services.
"Suffering gets worse"Queen Silvia founded the Childhood Foundation twenty years ago to bring attention to the issue of child sexual exploitation in the world.
"The suffering becomes worse for the vulnerable child when the abuse spreads online," the Queen said recently in a speech at a conference on the same theme organized by Pope Francis in the Vatican.
The Queen calls for better technical tools and more collaboration to discover and analyze material with abuse and thus be able to identify and rescue more children. The King couple has therefore invited 40 leading experts in the tech companies, Interpol and Internet operators to find more solutions.
"Criminals exploit the loopholes"- The range of material with child abuse has exploded. There are a number of technical solutions, but criminals online use the loopholes. Tech companies need to do more and collaborate with the authorities, Elaine Weidman-Grunewald tells SVT News. She is one of the founders of the AI Sustainability Center, an organization that works with social issues in the tech industry.
A Gothenburg-based company has developed software that can detect abusive material. Today, the company Netclean collaborates with police agencies in many countries with various technical solutions that can detect, identify and report images of child sexual abuse, both on the Internet, in the darknet and in corporate computers.
The problem is exacerbatedChildhood and other actors fear that the situation will worsen as the Internet is expanded in the world's poorest countries. AI, artificial intelligence, is hoped to be used to better protect children in the future.