Ending Online Child Abuse Through
Polycreek develops advanced AI tools that enable earlier detection, faster reporting, and more effective intervention to protect children online.
Our Mission
Polycreek works to protect children from online exploitation and abuse, including grooming and the spread of harmful content. We develop advanced tools that enable earlier detection, faster reporting, and more effective intervention, while equipping parents, organizations, and digital platforms to create safer online environments. Our mission is to reduce harm and strengthen protection for children in an increasingly connected world.
Our Need to Act Now
20.5M
CyberTipline reports in 2024
Containing nearly 63 million files of child sexual exploitation material.
NCMEC, 2024 ↗
19sec
to lock a child into grooming
Predators reach high-risk conversations in under 20 seconds, averaging 45 minutes total.
WeProtect / Thorn, 2024 ↗
300M+
children exploited online per year
Roughly 1 in 8 children worldwide — the first global prevalence estimate ever published.
Childlight / Univ. of Edinburgh, 2024 ↗
1,325%
surge in AI-generated CSAM
4,700 reports in 2023 to 67,000+ in 2024.
NCMEC, 2024 ↗
546K+
online enticement reports
Up 192% year-over-year. 2025 on pace to double again.
NCMEC CyberTipline, 2024 ↗
1 in 3
boys 9–12 targeted online
33% report an online sexual interaction — a five-year high.
Thorn, 2024 ↗
100/day
sextortion reports received
At least 36 teen suicides linked to financial sextortion since 2021.
NCMEC & FBI, 2024 ↗
2.5M
suspected CSAM URLs processed
A 218% increase from 2023. 65% confirmed illegal.
INHOPE, 2024 ↗
93%
of victims are under 13
Nine of ten CSAM recordings depict children aged 3 to 13.
INHOPE, 2024 ↗
1 in 5
children never tell anyone
Disclosure to trusted adults has dropped 10 percentage points since 2022.
Thorn, 2024 ↗
46%
of teens online “constantly”
Nearly double the 2015 rate. 95% of teens now have smartphone access.
Pew Research, 2024 ↗
38M+
takedown notices issued
164B+ images scanned across 1,500 providers in 100+ countries.
C3P / Project Arachnid, 2025 ↗
291K
CSAM webpages found in 2024
The most in IWF's 29-year history. 97% depicted the abuse of girls.
IWF, 2024 ↗
40%
of minors approached by predators
47% of teen girls report being contacted. LGBTQ+ minors are targeted 3× more.
Thorn, 2024 ↗
$5B
spent annually on incarceration
The U.S. spends billions responding to child sex crimes. Prevention costs a fraction.
WeProtect, 2025 ↗
Every child deserves to just be a kid.
Kids used to spend their afternoons outside with bikes and toys. Now they're in Discord servers, Roblox lobbies, group chats. Same kids, same instinct to play, just a different playground.
It's also where the predators are hiding. That's the part we're trying to fix.
Meet Aletheia
Most filters tell you a conversation looks bad. Aletheia, trained on 2.74 million real grooming and abuse cases, tells you which user in it is the predator. The classifier returns a risk score, the predator's user ID, and a confidence value in around 38ms.
Score messages as they happen.
Run your live DMs, comments, and community chat through Aletheia. Each message comes back with a risk score, so your moderators work the dangerous stuff first instead of going through everything in order.
Drop in and go
Webhook, SDK, or plain HTTP. Most platforms are running in days, not months.
The worst cases file themselves
Critical risk gets sent straight to NCMEC. Everything else goes to your T&S team, ranked.
COPPA, GDPR, DSA, KOSA
We score the message and throw it away. Nothing kept by default. Audit logs if you need them.
For moderation teams that have more reports coming in than reviewers to clear them.
"hey saw your post earlier, you seem cool"
"haha thanks ur post was funny"
"ur really mature for ur age tho lol"
"we should hop in a vc 1on1 sometime, just us"
"idk maybe"
"don't tell ur parents tho they wouldnt get it"
Work the worst cases first.
Investigators send in conversations in bulk: Discord exports, school-app dumps, subpoenaed messages. Aletheia sorts them by severity, and the worst ones come back as NCMEC-ready reports.
Bulk triage
Push thousands of conversations through the batch endpoint. The worst ones come back at the top of the list.
Reports law enforcement can use
High-risk cases come back as structured reports in the formats NCMEC and law enforcement actually want.
Doesn't care where the data came from
Discord, Instagram, gaming platforms, school apps, your own dumps. If it's a text conversation, we'll score it.
Built around NCMEC reporting from the first commit.
One endpoint. Same JSON every call.
POST a conversation. You get back a risk score, the predator's user ID, and a confidence number. Same shape every time, no surprises.
Everything in one response
Risk score, predator user, tier, confidence. All in one JSON object, ~38ms at p50.
Live or in bulk
Score conversations as they happen, or push millions through the batch endpoint.
Nothing kept
We score the conversation and drop it. Nothing on our side to leak, nothing extra on yours to defend.
Authenticated, rate-limited, documented.
Standing With the Organizations Protecting Kids Online
NCMEC
Internet Watch Foundation
WeProtect Global Alliance
ICMEC
INHOPE
Tech Coalition
Polaris Project
ECPAT International
NetClean
Microsoft PhotoDNA
Apple Trust & Safety
NCMEC
Internet Watch Foundation
WeProtect Global Alliance
ICMEC
INHOPE
Tech Coalition
Polaris Project
ECPAT International
NetClean
Microsoft PhotoDNA
Apple Trust & Safety
I founded Polycreek because I believe we can use AI for good, to protect the most vulnerable among us. Every child deserves to grow up safe online, and we won't stop building until that's a reality.
Zeran Johannsen
Founder & President, Polycreek
“In 2024, over 20.5 million reports of child sexual exploitation were filed online.”
The scale of online child exploitation is growing faster than human review can keep up. That's why we build technology to close the gap: faster detection, faster reporting, faster intervention.
Notes from Polycreek
A monthly note on what we're building, the stories behind the work, and where we could use help.