Oterlu — Using cutting edge AI to protect users from online abuse
We are excited to welcome Oterlu to the Icebreaker portfolio!
Oterlu is on a mission to make all users feel welcome online.
The idea to found Oterlu sparked when the founder Alexander Gee worked as an analyst and manager on Search Quality and Child Safety at Google, and witnessed the problem of toxic online behaviour. He turned the problem into a challenge, challenge into an opportunity, and joined forces with Ludvig Gee and Sebastian Nabrink, the other two co-founders of Oterlu. Both Ludvig and Sebastian have years of experience in machine learning as well as web development and data science and they have both previously worked at Stena IT.
Currently, game studios and social platforms rely on dedicated community managers to manually inspect texts that other users have reported as toxic. This is obviously very time-consuming and fails to detect any unreported toxic texts. Consequently, failure to detect toxic user behaviour has a significant negative impact on user satisfaction as well as retention rates and moreover comes with a negative business cost.
“There has been a huge increase in awareness especially on both social platforms and the games industry around the prevalence of harassment, hate speech and grooming within online communities. But, the tools available to the likes of community managers and trust and safety teams have not kept up with the technological advancements. With our AI service and tools, we are empowering these teams to take scalable action and better understand their communities. “
Oterlu is developing an AI SaaS API to automatically parse through user-generated text and flag bullying and grooming while aiding moderators in their work in creating healthy and thriving online communities.
“The investment will allow us to reach more customers globally and have a continued focus on our product development. AI is a field that moves very fast and we always want to be at the forefront,” says Alexander Gee, CEO of Oterlu.
“We spend more and more time online and toxicity is a major problem for a lot of communities. When we first met the founders it was very clear to us that they can play a part in improving online social experiences for a lot of people. We are excited to be part of their journey.” says Leo Giertz, General Partner at Icebreaker.
Welcome to the Icebreaker family, team Oterlu!
