Several major technology players from business, academia and civil society said they are launching a foundation to provide safety tools for artificial intelligence (AI) on the sidelines of a summit in Paris dedicated to the technology.

The Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) initiative will build a "large-scale, interoperable safety infrastructure fit for the AI era," said the statement, backed by sector heavyweight OpenAI, former Google chief Eric Schmidt and gaming platform giant Roblox.

ROOST will "bridge an important gap in digital safety - especially the safety of children online - by providing free, open source safety tools to public and private organizations of all sizes around the world," the announcement added.

Policymakers and tech industry leaders from around the world are meeting in Paris to discuss how best to tackle the emergence of artificial intelligence.

Open-source software development, where software creators share the inner workings of their systems freely with others to collaborate, is one of the proposed ways to boost confidence in the new technology.

ROOST's contributions will include "free, open and easy-to-use tools to detect, review and report child sexual abuse material (CSAM)," the statement, carried by AFP, said.

The foundation, based at Columbia University in New York, will also use large language models (LLM) powered by artificial intelligence "to power the safety infrastructure," it said.

ROOST said it has raised $27 million in funding that will cover its "first four years of operations," with donors including "a number of philanthropies and leading technology companies." | BGNES