According to government statistics, nearly 50 million people are trafficked into modern slavery. Some of the weapons these traffickers use are the same social media apps, dating platforms, and online games used around the world. 

“One is the efficiency of their exploitation,” said Haley McNamara, Executive Director and Chief Strategy Officer at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “There’ve been reports of them using chatbots to help edit their language, to appear more like children in their tone or style of speech. And also, even asking some chatbots for step-by-step guidelines on how to initiate grooming and relationship building with children.”

In an interview with CBN News, McNamara highlighted other ways traffickers are using artificial intelligence to their advantage, including the targeting of children.

“AI generated child sexual abuse material, whether creating new material out of innocent photos or creating additional material out of maybe one photo or one video, and relatedly, there’s sextortion and blackmail, where with deep fake technology, we’ve seen that you can create very realistic, explicit images of anyone in less time than it takes to brew a cup of coffee. And that can be used to blackmail or extort someone into further sexual abuse,” explained McNamara.

Regent University’s Center for Global Justice recently brought in experts for a deeper discussion of how investigators are also using AI and technology to fight human trafficking.

Bill Woolf spent 15 years in law enforcement, much of it dedicated to combating human trafficking. He then followed that path in the Justice Department and in 2018 received a presidential medal for extraordinary efforts in the first Trump administration.

Woolf talked about out how easily people can become a victim.

“Young people are getting access through various different gaming applications, social media, online chat forums, and traffickers are using those opportunities to be able to groom and manipulate,” Woolf explained. 

Woolf also explained how traffickers control their victims while not being physically present, which makes it more difficult for law enforcement.

“So, you can imagine a police officer that may respond to a hotel where there’s a trafficking victim, he enters the hotel room and it’s only the victim inside, not the trafficker,” said Woolf. “The question may be, is it truly a trafficking situation? And so, it makes it very confusing for law enforcement to be able to effectively investigate these various different cases while the trafficker is miles or even states away from the physical location.”

To counter these tactics, anti-trafficking groups are also finding unique ways to incorporate AI in their fight.

Brittany Dunn is with the Safe House Project which works to identify victims and meet their most critical needs.

Earlier this year, the group launched “Simply Report” – an AI-powered app for users to report suspected trafficking.

“You can go on and talk about if you suspect your child might be a victim of trafficking, or you saw somebody at a hotel or gas station who looked vulnerable or in a vulnerable situation, you can validate your assumptions – it will analyze it against the behavioral risk matrix. If it determines it is suspected trafficking, it routes it to law enforcement and also to our survivor support team,” Dunn told CBN News. 

The technology has already had a quick impact.

“In the first three months, we saw over 8,000 signals, 1,200 cases, and 684 victims identified and served, and that’s just the beginning,” said Dunn. 
 
As the trafficking problem grows, McNamara says more tools are being developed to use against it.

“One way that is especially interesting is projects like traffic cam or Microsoft’s Photo DNA, which helps analyze hotel rooms and compare those with exploitation images circulating online to help law enforcement locate victims,” said McNamara. 
 
Meanwhile, anti-trafficking advocates admit the trafficking war is hard to win, but they see this embrace of new ways to fight an age-old problem as a major step forward.

“We know that the traffickers are using AI,” said Meg Kelsey, Director of Regent University’s Center for Global Justice. “We know it is being wielded for evil. And so, in order to combat this evil, we must also know how to use this tool. The tool itself is not good or evil, it’s how it’s used, similar to money. And so how can we wield AI for good.”