Among the biggest concerns of parents whose kids own a smartphone must surely be the knowledge that there’s a whole bunch of nude content out there on the internet for them to stumble across. Likely more worrying still is the thought that their precious offspring may be tempted to make such content themselves.
Finnish phone-maker HMD has been on a mission for the past few years to make phone ownership a safer prospect for children via its Better Phones Project — and it might have come up with a solution to calm the nerves of concerned parents.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled the HMD Fuse phone, which comes with built-in AI-powered technology to prevent children from filming and sending nude content, as well as from seeing and saving sexual images — even from within a livestream.
“This is more than a product,” said James Robinson, vice president of HMD Family. “It’s a safety net, a statement of intent and a response.”
The AI (called HarmBlock Plus) was created by cybersecurity SafeToNet and is embedded into the phone (including the camera), which, according to HMD, makes it impossible to bypass. It’s apparently been ethically trained on 22 million harmful nude images and works offline.
“HarmBlock Plus can’t be removed, tricked, or worked around,” said SafeToNet founder Richard Pursey. “It doesn’t collect personal data. It just protects every time, across every app, including VPNs, with zero loopholes.”
Parental controls, similar to those available on the Fusion X1, which HMD introduced at MWC in March, will also allow for supervision and management of a child’s phone use. This can be scaled back as a kid grows older and requires more independence.
The phone is launching exclusively on Vodafone in the UK, where the recent introduction of the Online Safety Act means strict age verification rules are now required to prevent minors from accessing harmful content online.
It will cost £33 per month, with a £30 up-front fee and is set to launch in other countries in the coming months, starting with Australia. There’s no indication the Fuse will be headed to the US, where the company has, in the past few months, scaled back its operations.
