Turning “Victim Protection Technology” into a Public Good
Seoul’s Innovation Available Nationwide
Processing Time Reduced from 3 Hours to 6 Minutes, 30 Times Faster
The "Digital Sex Crime AI Deletion Support" technology developed by the Seoul Metropolitan Government will be distributed free of charge. This technology shortens the time required to detect and delete sexually exploitative material distributed online. It marks the first instance of realizing "technology as a public good."
On March 2, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that, starting with the first free technology transfer agreement on March 3, it will distribute the "Digital Sex Crime AI Deletion Support" technology to government agencies, local governments, and companies that wish to acquire the technology.
This technology uses AI to conduct 24-hour real-time monitoring, automatically detecting illegal videos on various illegal websites and social networking services (SNS), quickly deleting the videos, and preventing their redistribution. Its excellence has been recognized both domestically and internationally, winning the "Presidential Award Grand Prize" as a government innovation best practice in 2023 and the "UN Public Service Award Grand Prize" in 2024. In particular, it was the first in the country to obtain a technology patent, further validating its effectiveness. After the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Institute completed the development of the core technology, it has been operated by the "Seoul Digital Sex Crime Support Center."
In 2024, face recognition and age prediction deletion support technology for children and adolescents was added. In 2025, an AI automatic reporting system that automates everything from detection to reporting was additionally established.
The core of this technology is that, compared to the previous method where humans had to manually search and report each case, the processing time has been reduced from three hours to just six minutes-a 30-fold increase in speed. Digital sex crime victim support organizations outside of Seoul still have counselors manually detecting harmful videos. The Seoul Metropolitan Government expects that the free distribution of the AI deletion support technology will result in a budget savings of approximately 180 million won per institution.
The significance also lies in the fact that this is not just a proprietary technology for Seoul, but the first instance of realizing a "technology as a public good" model. The city plans to make this free AI technology broadly available for public interest purposes, supporting its use by government agencies and local governments without limitation to specific institutions or regions.
Its effectiveness has also been verified. After the introduction of AI technology, the number of deletion support cases handled by the "Seoul Digital Sex Crime Support Center" increased more than sixfold in four years, from 2,509 cases in 2022 to 15,777 cases in 2025. The AI system can even identify new illegal websites that humans cannot find, resulting in a significant increase in the number of deletion support cases for harmful videos discovered on these new sites.
It is now also possible to detect deepfake videos. Previously, victims needed to possess the original video to find identical copies, but the AI can identify and detect duplicates through three types of analysis: video, audio, and text-even without the original.
The introduction of AI technology has also helped minimize the psychological distress experienced by staff who previously had to view harmful videos daily. AI not only blurs harmful videos before sending them to deletion support officers, but also performs repetitive illegal video search work on their behalf, thereby protecting the mental health of support officers and ensuring the sustainability of their work.
Ok Yun, President of the Seoul Institute, stated, "This AI technology is the first innovative technology in the country to receive a patent, and it is the first case of the Seoul Institute opening a public technology it developed free of charge to realize social value. It is very meaningful that technology developed by a research institution can bring about real change in the field of victim protection across the country."
Ma Chaesook, Director-General of Women's and Family Policy at the Seoul Metropolitan Government, also commented, "This free distribution of Seoul's AI technology is a decision made with the highest priority on victim protection. It is significant in that it expands the 'victim protection technology' developed by Seoul from being a proprietary asset to a public good for public safety."
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