ABOUT

Child sex trafficking is a growing problem, with the internet making it easier for predators, harder for law enforcement, and nearly impossible for anyone to collect verifiable data on it. And with so little data available, securing funding and policy changes to fight it is extremely difficult at best. And since it’s such a difficult subject to talk about, awareness of the full extent of the problem is very low.

To address this problem, we developed Gracie, an artificially intelligent online presence designed to mimic real underage kids being sold for sex. She intercepts predators who are searching for sex online, collecting valuable data on their behavior.

First, predators click on ads that we placed, leading them to a text chat with Gracie. Then, when they solicit underage sex from her, Gracie sends a warning to them and sends their information to law enforcement. And lastly, she directs them to resources where they can find help.

She is the first of her kind with 112 distinct, adolescent personas, all developed using transcripts of predator and victim interactions from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, text chats from students at local universities, and guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. Gracie uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), saving manpower and money. She's able to accomplish in just a few minutes what would normally take hundreds of law enforcement officers working around the clock. Most importantly, every conversation Gracie has with a predator is one less conversation a predator has with a real kid.

Gracie has interacted with potential predators across 25 states and 78 cities, achieving undeniable results. She has exchanged over 54,000 messages, performed over 1,000 intercepts per month, and has reported over 6,000 would-be predators. Gracie’s therapy resource has a 9% clickthrough rate. She has also fueled the single biggest verifiable study on sex trafficking ever done, helping inspire real policy change, and becoming perhaps the greatest weapon we have to fight underage sex trafficking. Recently, four law enforcement agencies have reached out and are all in various stages of testing and/or implementing Gracie, including the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.