Roblox Joins Tech Companies in New Fund to Protect Kids Online

A new initiative from Alphabet Inc., OpenAI, Roblox Corp. and Discord raised more than $27 million to provide free, open-source tools for improving child safety online.

Robust Open Online Safety Tools, or ROOST, promises to address “a critical need to accelerate innovation in online child safety,” Eric Schmidt,a founding partner of the organization and former chief executive officer of Google, said in a statement. ROOST’s AI-powered tools will identify, review and report child sexual abuse material and make core safety technologies more accessible.

The coalition was announced Monday at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.

“Starting with ...