Thorn CEO Julie Cordua: My Vision for 2025

As we start 2025, I’m crammed with each willpower and hope as I replicate on Thorn’s journey and the crucial work that lies forward. 

The digital panorama continues to evolve at a fast tempo, bringing each new challenges and alternatives in our mission to defend kids from sexual abuse and exploitation within the digital age. The necessity for our work is pressing – and the threats going through kids on-line have gotten more and more advanced, refined, and widespread. 

But I’ve by no means been extra assured in our potential to satisfy these challenges head-on, because of our devoted workforce, companions, clients, and donors who share our imaginative and prescient of a world the place each baby may be protected, curious, and completely satisfied.

 Listed below are the important thing areas the place Thorn will focus our efforts in 2025:

Advancing technical innovation in a quickly evolving digital world: As generative synthetic intelligence (AI) and different rising applied sciences reshape our digital panorama, Thorn stays on the forefront of creating progressive options to guard kids. Our technical groups are pioneering new approaches to remove situations of kid sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on the internet, leveraging superior AI whereas guaranteeing moral deployment and security by design. This 12 months, we’ll proceed to scale our options globally whereas persevering with to boost our instruments. This consists of Safer – which continues to evolve, serving to extra firms detect, assessment, and report CSAM effectively and successfully. We’re additionally ideating and creating new applied sciences that can assist us keep forward of rising threats and higher defend kids in an more and more advanced digital setting.Deepening and sharing the impression of our analysis: Understanding the altering nature of on-line dangers to kids is essential for creating efficient options. In 2025, we’re investing in our analysis initiatives to offer important insights into rising threats and youth experiences on-line. This analysis is not going to solely inform our personal work however can even assist information the broader baby safety group.Empowering frontline investigators: Our dedication to supporting the investigators on the frontlines of figuring out and rescuing baby victims – people who’ve a few of the most troublesome and taxing jobs on the planet –  stays unwavering. In 2025, we’re persevering with to share instruments – like our CSAM Classifier – and different sources that can assist these frontline defenders work extra effectively and successfully in figuring out baby victims of abuse and eradicating them from hurt.

Trying forward: a revamped technique for Thorn’s subsequent chapter

Because the digital panorama turns into more and more advanced, Thorn will proceed to adapt, change, and scale our impression. The fast development of AI and different rising applied sciences presents each challenges and alternatives in our battle in opposition to baby sexual abuse. However with these challenges comes unprecedented potential for innovation and impression. 

Hold your eye in your inbox, as a result of within the coming months, we’ll be sharing extra about our imaginative and prescient for the long run – and we’ll launch our new, expanded organizational technique to satisfy this second. 

None of this could be attainable with out your assist – thanks. You gas our progressive approaches that permit us to proceed to scale our impression globally whereas remaining agile sufficient to deal with new threats as they emerge.

Collectively, we’re making actual, tangible change for kids – and I sit up for advancing this work collectively in 2025 and past.