academyEX Alumna Wins Global AI Safety Award As Areto Tackles Rising Levels Of Online Harm Globally From New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand_The New Zealand-based Founder of AI safety company Areto Labs is stepping into the global spotlight with Jacqueline Comer named the inaugural winner of the She Shapes AI Global Award for AI + Safety.

“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,” says Comer. “It started with a simple but overlooked problem - that existing models were missing a significant numbers of harmful interactions, particularly gender microaggressions - and we built from there.”

Areto’s platform is used across sport, media and the public sector, including major international initiatives with FIFPRO Asia/Oceania for women’s football and Pride Cup. The technology enables these organisations to set moderation standards aligned to their own communities, allowing them to actively shape safer, more constructive online environments.

“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,” says Comer. “In an environment where abuse, scams and other harms arrive in troves 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.”

In the past year alone, Areto’s systems have:

• intercepted over 229,000 fraud attempts and illegal streams
• disrupted 34,000 bots
• removed and archived more than 150,000 harmful interactions

How it works

Areto is a responsible AI content moderation platform designed to help organisations and individuals manage online communities to be safe spaces - a task that is becoming increasingly difficult with the proliferation of AI bots and online trolls.

“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 normally absorb that abuse themselves ,” explains Comer. “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.”

It works by continuously analysing interactions across your social channels, identifying harmful content in real time while distinguishing between genuine engagement and behaviour that crosses the line. This allows teams to effectively and instantly apply standards that reflect their unique community values.

The platform integrates quickly and easily, regardless of your existing tech stack, and supports more than 55 languages across major social platforms. Through a live dashboard, teams can monitor activity, track trends and generate reports - providing clear visibility of both risk and performance.

By reducing harmful interactions and improving the quality of engagement, Areto helps organisations create safer digital environments while protecting brand reputation, supporting teams and delivering measurable commercial outcomes.

A decade in the making but more relevant than ever

Over the past decade, Areto has quietly built momentum in a space that has recently reached a global crescendo, as a bellwether case involving Meta and and Google brought the addictive nature of social media into the spotlight and onto the regulatory agenda. The work behind it spans nearly ten years, beginning with early research into the barriers preventing women from running for elected office. That work led toParityBOT, an AI Twitter bot that detected and responded to online abuse targeting women candidates during elections in Canada, New Zealand and the United States. While analysing the data from that tool during her Masters at academyEX, Cormer uncovered a critical gap: existing systems were failing to detect more subtle, but pervasive forms of harm - particularly microaggressions, subtle, often indirect forms of discrimination or bias that are harder to detect but can have a cumulative and significant impact over time.

This insight led to the development of the Microaggressions Detection Model (MAMO), designed to identify these nuanced behaviours at scale, as Comer’s masters project. That research went on to shape Areto’s Responsible AI policy, and the Areto software platform has since been built out into a full content moderation system for broader organisational and global use.

“Online harm isn’t new - but the scale and speed is,” says Comer. “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.”

The timing is significant, too. Recent research shows New Zealand ranks among the lowest globally for trust in AI, with growing concern around misuse, deepfakes and online harm. Against this backdrop, Areto’s work sits at the intersection of safety, technology and societal impact.

Extending impact through ‘Face Forward’

Alongside the award, Areto is launching Face Forward, an initiative providing its software free for two years to women and gender-diverse elected officials and candidates across New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific.

“Face forward aims to address one of the most persistent barriers to participation in public life - online abuse - which continues to disproportionately impact 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,” explains Cormer.

From learning to global impact

academyEX Founder and CEO Frances Valintine says the award highlights the long-term impact of applied, purpose-driven learning.

“This is a powerful example of what happens when research meets real-world application,” says Valintine. “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.”

The ongoing dialogue between academyEX and Areto reflects a broader commitment to developing capability in emerging areas such as responsible AI, where technical innovation must be matched with ethical and societal consideration.

A tipping point for AI safety

As AI continues to accelerate, the focus is shifting from capability alone to how that capability is applied.

“No one is immune to online harm,” Comer adds. “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 spearheading solutions,” concludes Cormer.

About Areto Labs

Areto is a women-founded technology company pioneering AI-driven solutions that detect and remove online abuse, hate speech, fraud, and digital piracy. Trusted by sports leagues, broadcasters, rights holders, global brands, and public figures, Areto helps protect communities, strengthen engagement, and create safer online environments. With a mission at the intersection of technology and social impact, Areto is shaping the future of digital safety and performance at scale.

About academyEX

academyEX is New Zealand’s only Category 1 rated private postgraduate institute designed specifically for mid-career professionals who are ready to build on their established expertise. Founded by Frances Valintine CNZM, the institute builds on a decade of educational innovation that began with the launch of The Mind Lab in 2013 and Tech Futures Lab in 2016. Today, academyEX provides NZQA accredited qualifications ranging from micro-credentials to research masters degrees in fields including AI fluency, adaptive leadership, and organisational resilience. The curriculum is structured to be flexible and stackable, allowing working professionals to integrate high-level learning into their lives without stepping away from their careers. Every programme is anchored in the belief that experience is an asset and that the most impactful learning happens when professionals return to education with a clear sense of purpose. By focusing on genuine hands-on familiarity with emerging tools and the human connection that technology cannot replicate, academyEX ensures that its graduates are equipped to lead through constant change with grounded confidence and curiosity.

© Scoop Media