17-year old Chow Sze-Lok, a student at St Mary’s Canossian College in Hong Kong, has developed an AI tool that detects possible child abuse from live CCTV feeds.
In an post by Young Post Club of the South China Morning Post back in May 2025, Sze-lok said she was very interested in IT and STEM from a young age.
After frequent news of child abuse in local newspapers, she said that it was unfair that some children experienced unhappy childhoods. She knew that there were already CCTV cameras available, so why not use AI to detect potential child abuse in real-time?
She discussed the idea with her classmates and they decided to take action. They consulted with their teacher who supported the idea, and their school helped provide equipment but the entire endeavor was student-led.
They worked on the project for six months to train the model. Privacy laws prevented them from getting actual abuse footage, so they captured simulated videos themselves to train the model. It took quite a long time as Sze-lok was using a 12-year old laptop at the time.
In 2024, Sze-lok’s school participated in the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions, where her project Kid-AID won a bronze medal.
Sze-lok was the first runner-up in the Scientist/Mathematician category at the Student of the Year Awards 2024, organized by the South China Morning Post and sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
Her work helped her win the Top Ten Young STEAM Talents Award in 2024 from The Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education (HKAGE).
Sze-lok emphasizes the importance of leveraging technology to solve injustice and inequality in our society.
She believes technology has a role in solving societal issues. “AI could handle repetitive tasks that consume human labor, like cleaning,” she said.
Instead of hiring people to manually monitor CCTVs, training AI to detect specific actions is a cost-effective solution.
“I also hope technology can help bridge inequalities, providing better resources to developing countries.”
“My goal has always been to use technology to improve lives,” she explained. “Knowing your purpose helps you identify real-world problems and find ways to address them.”
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