Areto founder Jacqueline Comer wins global AI safety award

Areto founder Jacqueline Comer has won the inaugural She Shapes AI Global Award for AI + Safety, putting the New Zealand AI safety business on a wider international stage.

Comer founded Areto, a content moderation company whose software is used by organisations in sport, media and the public sector. Its platform is deployed in work with FIFPRO Asia/Oceania for women's football and Pride Cup, and is designed to help organisations manage online communities and identify harmful content.

The recognition stems from research Comer began during a Masters programme at academyEX. She said the work examined bias in natural language processing models used to fine-tune other AI systems, as well as the failure of existing tools to detect harmful interactions, including gender microaggressions.

"The recognition traces back to research into inherent bias within Natural Language Processing models used to fine-tune other AI models, which I began during my Masters in 2019 at academyEX," said Jacqueline Comer, founder of Areto.

"It started with a simple but overlooked problem: existing models were missing a significant number of harmful interactions, particularly gender microaggressions, and we built from there," she said.

Platform use

Areto said its systems intercepted more than 229,000 fraud attempts and illegal streams over the past year, disrupted 34,000 bots, and removed and archived more than 150,000 harmful interactions. The software supports more than 55 languages across major social platforms and includes a dashboard for monitoring activity, trends and reports.

The platform analyses interactions across social channels in real time and distinguishes between genuine engagement and behaviour that breaches moderation standards, according to the company. Users can also set moderation rules that reflect the norms of their own communities.

"Content moderation isn't about removing conversation, it's about giving communities the tools they need to uphold the standards of engagement they choose for themselves," Comer said.

"In an environment where abuse, scams and other harms arrive in waves around the clock, whether you're managing content for the local Super Rugby team or you're the mayor of a small New Zealand community, it becomes impossible to keep up," she said.

The company traces its origins to research on barriers facing women running for elected office. That work led to ParityBOT, an AI Twitter bot that detected and responded to online abuse directed at women candidates during elections in Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

While studying data from that project, Comer identified what she described as a gap in existing moderation systems. The result was the Microaggressions Detection Model, known as MAMO, developed as a Masters project and later used to inform Areto's responsible AI policy and software platform.

Online harm

Areto's expansion comes amid broader concern about online abuse, scams, deepfakes and trust in AI. The company argues that the volume and pace of harmful online behaviour have increased, making manual moderation harder for organisations and public figures.

"At its core, it functions like an AI-powered firewall for your social channels, filtering harm at the speed it appears and enabling healthy conversation while protecting the wellbeing of the people who would otherwise absorb that abuse themselves," Comer said.

"Some organisations and leaders see harmful comments every minute or more, and the impact on people's wellbeing is real. You need help to keep pace and to ensure people can participate, work and lead safely in online spaces," she said.

The company is also introducing Face Forward, an initiative that will provide its software free for two years to women and gender-diverse elected officials and candidates across New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. Areto said the programme is intended to address online abuse that can discourage participation in public life.

"Face Forward aims to address one of the most persistent barriers to participation in public life: online abuse, which continues to disproportionately affect underrepresented groups. We've seen first-hand how online harm affects participation, and too often people simply opt out. Face Forward is about changing that by giving people the tools to engage safely and confidently," Comer said.

AcademyEX founder and chief executive officer Frances Valintine said the award reflected the commercial and social reach of research-led work developed through postgraduate study.

"This is a powerful example of what happens when research meets real-world application," said Frances Valintine, founder and chief executive officer of academyEX.

"Jacqueline's work began as part of her academic journey and has evolved into a globally recognised platform addressing one of the most critical issues of our time," she said.

Comer said concern about online harm is no longer confined to a narrow group of users or organisations as awareness grows.

"Online harm isn't new, but the scale and speed is," she said.

"For a long time, this problem sat below the surface. It's only now that we're seeing broader awareness of both the problem and its impact, and people's readiness to address it."

"No one is immune to online harm. What's changed is that more people now understand the problem and are ready to act. The question is no longer whether we address it, but how quickly we do so. Areto Labs is proud to be at the forefront of solutions," Comer said.