AI-Based Child Avatar for Interview Training

Preventing violence, sexual abuse, and neglect against children is a pressing societal and political concern. Globally, around 1 billion children suffer from neglect, violence, and abuse annually (WHO, 2022), leading to severe mental and physical health issues. Despite education and training efforts, interview quality remains lacking, with professionals often failing to meet best practices. Traditional classroom education has not effectively enhanced skills, and research show rapid skill deterioration among professional groups (Lamb et al., 2018). We have developed an AI-driven digital training program, drawing from psychology, education, and AI expertise, featuring a dynamic child avatar. The key innovations include: 1) A dynamic AI-based avatar for interview training, merging insights from developmental and educational psychology with AI advancements. 2) Our self-paced avatar offers standardized training measures, consistently assessing professionals' performance in various contexts. 3) This interactive avatar mimics children in interviews, providing integrated AI-based feedback, including both external and internal types, to the users. Enthusiastic responses from communities, service providers, and conference attendees underscore significant interest in utilizing this system for training purposes, leading to the establishment of Start-Up Innsikt.AI in 2023. The project has great potential to innovate services by this AI-based training program that enhance conversation skills for professionals in child welfare, police, teachers, pediatricians, nurses, and judges. Its digital format boosts efficiency, enabling regular cross-sector training. Crucially, by improving conversation skills, this AI- based training system has the potential to protect and assist more children.

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