Teen creates AI code to battle cyberbullying

We're back now with day two of our series, Game Changers, introducing you to young women carving their own path, and while doing that, making the world a better place for others. Well, this morning, meet the team who created a cutting edge technology to fight back against cyberbullying. As a daughter of a global IT strategist, 18 year old Gitanjali Rao, saw a lot of new places growing up. I moved around to seven different schools in the past 12 years of my schooling life. Constantly being the new kid, she says she often faced bullying. Every new place that you go, you meet a new group of students that you inevitably get pushed around by. I started to realize how big of an issue bullying was, especially behind a screen. It is estimated that between 15 to 30% of middle and high schoolers report experiencing cyberbullying. Cyberbullying must be prevented because it's an issue that shouldn't exist in the first place. So she got to work behind her screen, writing an AI code. A lot of times speaking up doesn't work. So I wanted to create a solution that was created by a teenager for a teenager to help solve this problem, not only on the victim end, but also the bully end. She created a technology that works similar to spell check. When turned on, once the user writes a social media post or message, it scans it for bullying keywords. When you initially type in a message, Kindly constantly keeps checking these words and at the end of it, before you're able to click submit, Kindly looks at it and says, hmm, maybe this isn't something that I would send or this looks good to go. Giving them the opportunity to rewrite their message in a nicer way before they hit send. What we don't realize is that a lot of times bullying happens because the bully was a victim in the past. So taking that time to allow students to reevaluate what they're saying, they could not only help others, but help themselves through the process. I wanted this to be a tool that was completely self-driven, a tool that students would make the conscious effort to use because I want sending kind messages to be as much of a norm as sending messages without grammar issues or without spelling mistakes. And her vision for Kindly is being recognized globally. UNICEF now developing her software as a digital public good, which are technologies available to anyone in the world that only serve the purpose of making the world a better place. There's an opportunity to take something like this to scale. It's really unique for someone to understand the challenges of teenagers, but also have the technical ability to connect those two and use an AI solution to deal with something so meaningful. Kindly is now available on Instagram, Slack, Google Classroom, and Facebook Messenger. I want online safety to be just as important as any other global issue that's out there. Gitanjali is making history through incredible innovation. It's important to be a game changer because everyone has the power to change the world. Well, that right there is the face of a game changer. You may recognize her because she came to GMA when she was 11 years old after being named America's Top Young Scientist for inventing a groundbreaking new way to test for lead and water. So she's been at this for a long time. Now she's a freshman at MIT. Wow. And it's pretty clear. She's just getting started. Really just getting started. Madam President, we're gonna see big things from her. Got my vote. Well, hey there, GMA fans, Robin Roberts here. Thanks for checking out our YouTube channel. Lots of great stuff here. So go on, click the subscribe button right over here to get more of awesome videos and content from GMA every day, anytime. We thank you for watching and we'll see you in the morning on GMA.