Tech giant Microsoft last week announced a new initiative called Project Artemis, a grooming detection technique it developed along with a handful of companies — including New Hope-based The Meet Group, known for gaming and dating apps such as MeetMe, Tagged and NextDate.

The technique works with text-based conversations, and will scan, evaluate and “rate” conversation characteristics to determine if the language being used could be predatory, Microsoft said. The rating will be sent to human moderators at participating companies for review, who can then identify threats and inform law enforcement.

Project Artemis came out of a 2018 Microsoft hackathon which was sponsored by the WePROTECT Global Alliance and the Child Dignity Alliance. This new technology is the result of 14 months of cross-industry work from Microsoft, along with gaming and messaging app makers The Meet Group, Roblox, Kik and others to help identify potential instances of child online grooming for sexual purposes and to operationalize an effective response.

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