Roblox is rolling out three new artificial-intelligence tools designed to catch predators before they can reach a child, and the company says it’s giving the technology away for free.
“Nearly 70% of the cases we detected were due to Sentinel’s early detection,” said Naren Koneru, Roblox’s Vice President of Trust and Safety Engineering, in a company blog post published Aug. 19, 2026. Koneru was describing Sentinel v2, one of three open-source safety models Roblox released that day through the Robust Open Online Safety Tools Model Community, known as ROOST.
Roblox joined ROOST as a founding member in early 2025 alongside Google and OpenAI. The idea is simple: instead of guarding its safety technology, Roblox is handing it to any platform that wants it, on the theory that predators don’t stay contained to one app.
The three tools work differently but toward the same end. PII Classifier v2.0 flags attempts to pry personal information out of kids or steer them onto other platforms, and Roblox says it now works in 189 languages, up from just 17, with accuracy climbing from a 63.41 to a 90.52 F1 score. Sentinel v2 studies conversation patterns for early warning signs of grooming, before things escalate. Voice Safety Classifier v3 listens for trouble in real time across 30 languages and eight violation categories, and has already been downloaded more than 72,000 times since 2024.
Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki discussed the rollout on FOX & FRIENDS, telling viewers the company has no tolerance for bad actors and pointing to customizable chat settings parents can use to build safety in by default. That’s a notable message for a platform with 123 million daily active users, Roblox reported for the second quarter of 2026, nearly 75% of them minors.
Related: Roblox Attempts to Silence YouTuber Who Exposed Predators on the Platform
It’s also a message Movieguide® readers have heard before, and not always with the same confidence. Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers sued Roblox in March, alleging the company “built a multibillion-dollar business on the trust of families, all while creating a playground for predators.” Nebraska joined at least seven other states and jurisdictions already suing over similar claims.
Movieguide® has reported on researchers finding Roblox groups trading child sexual abuse material, one with more than 103,000 members, and has covered child-safety experts who call the platform a hunting ground for predators. A Nebraska kidnapping case cited in this week’s coverage followed a familiar pattern: a predator made contact through Roblox, then moved the conversation to Snapchat, where messages disappear.
That pattern is exactly what Sentinel and the PII Classifier are built to catch, and if the numbers hold up outside a company blog post, that’s real progress worth acknowledging. Movieguide® has also pushed back when Roblox’s follow-through didn’t match its promises, including reporting on the company’s attempt to silence a YouTuber who exposed predators on the platform.
None of that makes new AI models a bad thing. Technology that flags a predator’s first move, before a child ever feels unsafe, is worth building and worth sharing with competitors. It just isn’t a substitute for a parent who knows what their kid is doing online, checks in without prying, and treats every new safety feature as a helpful backstop rather than a reason to stop paying attention.
Families weighing whether Roblox belongs on their kids’ devices can find Roblox’s chat and privacy settings in the app’s account settings menu, under Parental Controls. Discernment, as always, starts at home — no algorithm, however well-trained, replaces it.
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