AI tries to help you protect your children from cyberbullying

A child looking at a tablet

AI could help spot cyberbullying

True Images / Alamy

Cyberbullying has become a scourge of social media, but artificial intelligence is learning to detect and filter out hurtful posts before they reach vulnerable users.

About one-third of teenagers say they have been bullied online. Some victims have taken their own lives – including 14-year-old Australian schoolgirl Amy Everett in January – prompting governments to introduce harsher penalties for perpetrators. However, these measures fail to prevent exposure to cyberbullying in the first place.

Gilles Jacobs at Ghent University in Belgium and his colleagues wondered if they could train …