The GWC Challenge AI + Cybersecurity Winners
Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers lost more than $12 billion to consumer fraud attacks and scams. It is anticipated that the cost will be even higher this year as AI enables scammers to create deepfakes, copy voices, and personalize messages.
For this year’s GWC Challenge, we invited students to create projects showing how AI can help protect people’s identities and creativity online. We’re impressed by the creative tools and impactful solutions students built, from protecting personal information to making complicated terms and conditions easier to understand. Check out the winners of the 2025-2026 GWC Challenge!
Category: College
IdentifyShield AI
IdentityShield AI is an assistant that helps people understand, detect, and respond to digital identity threats like impersonation, deepfakes, and misuse of personal content. It gives clear guidance, focusing on fairness and empowering vulnerable users.
Phishta A.I.: Detect and Stop Impersonation
Phishta is an AI-powered cybersecurity tool to help Instagram users detect and stop impersonation scams. The tool identifies profile similarities and suspicious message language, flags high-risk accounts, and educates users about social engineering tactics.
TrueEcho
TrueEcho is a “voice shield” that protects seniors from audio deepfakes using biometric authentication and sentiment analysis to verify identity and detect scams in real time.
Unmask
Unmask is a deepfake detection app that addresses bias in existing models. It analyzes media for authenticity, emphasizing transparency, equity, and ethical AI.
Category: High School
Clause Code AI
Adeline, Clare L, and Clare C, 11th graders, created Clause Code AI to make Terms and Conditions agreements easier to understand. The web app provides tailored information and encourages better cyber-hygiene.
CookieGuard AI
Avelyn, a 9th grader, created CookieGuard AI, a browser extension that locally uses AI to detect and assess risky authentication cookies, alerting users to reduce identity theft. It identifies cookies most critical to user identity, flags potential misconfigurations, and helps prevent hijacking or unauthorized actions, all while preserving privacy.
I Refuse To Disappear
“I Refuse to Disappear” is a poem by 9th grader Shivani that reframes AI as a tool for fairness and empowerment against digital threats.
TrueTrace AI
Arshi, a 10th grader, developed TrueTrace, a comprehensive approach to protect a person’s work and identity from multiple threats. It integrates AI-powered fingerprinting, extensive content analysis, and creates AI-generated proof-of-ownership certificates for photos, videos, documents, and artwork to protect users from content theft, deepfakes, style imitation, and more.
Category: Middle School
Artificial Intelligence Pause (AIP)
Harini, an 8th grader, created AIP to detect scams, impersonation, and manipulative messages. The app alerts users and pauses interactions if fraud is suspected.
Pairdox
Felicia, a seventh grader, created Paradox, an AI security suite that detects deepfakes and scams by analyzing speech and text and uses a privacy-first challenge-response system.
SafeShare AI
SafeShare AI, created by 8th grader Annika, helps prevent accidental oversharing of sensitive data, such as school logos or addresses, in photos before they are posted. It identifies and provides users with safer suggestions to protect their digital identities.
Thank you to all the students who shared their ideas, and to our partners, Rocket Genius, Capital Fund Management, The Providencia Group, Genpact, and Duck Creek Technologies, for their support of the GWC Challenge.
