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.”
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
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.