A young girl, powered by AI, could help authorities improve the way they interview abused children.
The avatar has been programmed to answer questions from police, protective services and others who deal with child abuse.
Developed by Griffith University's Martine Powell and researchers in Norway, the AI girl can speak any language and present as a child of various ages.
Professor Powell, from Griffith Criminology Institute’s Centre for Investigative Interviewing, said there were many challenges children faced when disclosing abuse.
"You've got emotional issues such as the fear of the consequences of reporting or loyalty to who committed the abuse," she told AAP.
"You've got memory issues ... and then there's the language issues, does the child have the words to describe what happened in a way we can understand."
Prof Powell said the avatar helped to improve interviewing techniques by encouraging more open-ended questions which allowed a person to say what happened in their own words.
Norwegian researcher and project manager Gunn Astrid Baugerud from OsloMet’s Faculty of Social Sciences said the avatar would act as a real child might in the same situation.
“Someone who is less experienced and needs to strengthen their skills in asking open-ended questions could use one version and more experienced practitioners would have a more challenging experience, with an avatar disclosing fewer details," she said.
“Some abused children will be very talkative and others will not be – so we try to prompt ways of adhering to best practice to get the best results.”
The avatar has been trained on more than 2000 transcriptions of human interactions.
Prof Powell said the transcriptions were interviews with what she called "human avatars" - adults playing the role of a child for the purpose of training.
"These human avatars are very happy to be replaced by digital avatars if they prove to work well," she said.
"We do training all around the world and it's very onerous to try and work out time differences and to have people available and it's not pleasant playing the role of an abused child all the time."
Prof Powell said if the avatar helped improve interviewing techniques, it could be used across a range of training situations.
"Teachers need to question about potential bullying or other incidents, health professionals may ask sensitive questions about children's experiences and their bodies," she said.
"The avatar can talk about a range of events, not just abuse so the application and the cost savings for training is actually quite huge."
