ROOST Launches Independent Research to Map Accuracy of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) Detection Tools
Published
Led by Dr. Rebecca Portnoff, the effort will assess performance gaps in detecting CSAM and produce a practical guide for evaluating detection tools
PARIS, FRANCE – November 10, 2026 – Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST), a tech nonprofit building open source safety tools anyone can deploy to protect their users, today announced new research to map the reliability and efficacy of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) detection tools. This work comes as global leaders and tech developers renew their focus on children’s online safety in the AI era, and was unveiled alongside President Macron and global technology leaders at a Paris Peace Forum roundtable focused on making AI safer for children. The project will be led by Dr. Rebecca Portnoff, ROOST’s inaugural Scientific Fellow and renowned expert in AI and child safety.
“As AI makes CSAM easier to produce and disseminate, we need evidence about how well the current detection methods actually work,” said Dr. Camille François, President, ROOST. “By giving an honest picture of the state of these capabilities, including what we don’t yet know or can’t measure, we’re hoping to give the field a roadmap for where to focus collaborative efforts in research and innovation.”
Platforms rely on CSAM detection tools to protect children, but no one has a clear picture of where and how those tools fail. There are no common benchmarks for how often they miss CSAM or flag the wrong content, how they handle video versus images, or how they cope with low-quality, edited, or AI-generated media. There is also little evidence on whether they perform differently by age, skin tone, language, or region, and little guidance for setting thresholds for different products.
“We can’t close gaps in protection that we haven’t measured,” said Dr. Rebecca Portnoff, ROOST’s inaugural Scientific Fellow. “There are any number of reasons why safety interventions may fail — including that the underlying technology doesn't work as promised — but that shouldn't be a matter of speculation. This research will give practitioners concrete guidance on how to assess detection methods: where they work, where they break down, and how different contexts affect performance, moving us past rhetoric to figuring out what actually works. I’m glad to be doing this work with ROOST."
The research will combine a structured review of scientific literature on CSAM detection with an overview of existing solutions, tools, and products on the market. ROOST will then work with researchers and safety practitioners to establish a proposed framework for evaluating CSAM detection technologies, and ultimately create a “practical decision guide” that helps organizations interpret tools’ performance claims, comparing detection methods, and choose the safest, most effective tools for their unique deployment needs.
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About ROOST: ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit building open source safety tools anyone can deploy to protect their users. ROOST provides the essential building blocks that let organizations and platforms of every size protect their communities without the high costs or black-box secrecy of proprietary technology. Its tools cover the full safety lifecycle, from real-time detection and investigation to scaled review and enforcement, and are trusted by platforms ranging from small independent communities to some of the world’s largest. Founded in 2025, ROOST makes digital safety open, shared, and auditable for everyone. For more information, visit roost.tools.
About Dr. Rebecca Portnoff: Rebecca has dedicated her career to defending children from sexual abuse. A computer scientist by training, she holds a B.S.E. from Princeton and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, child safety, and technology governance. Her work spans technical research, building and scaling AI systems, Safety-by-Design, standards, and public policy. Rebecca has been recognized as an MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 and a Fast Company AI 20 honoree.
Press Contact: ROOSTComms@evergreenstrategygroup.com