# Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning via ChatGPT to Protect Children from Age-Inappropriate Apps

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.06309 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06309/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03744/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)
- [Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07682/) (2022)
- [Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10625/) (2022)
- [A Survey on Evaluation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03109/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Machine Learning: A Survey and Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09406/) (2017)
- [Large Language Models for Mathematical Reasoning: Progresses and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00157/) (2024)
- [Multimodal Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04856/) (2023)
- [Can ChatGPT Detect DeepFakes? A Study of Using Multimodal Large Language Models for Media Forensics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14077/) (2024)
- [GPT-4V with Emotion: A Zero-shot Benchmark for Generalized Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04293/) (2023)
- [ConTextual: Evaluating Context-Sensitive Text-Rich Visual Reasoning in Large Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13311/) (2024)
- [Detection of Illicit Drug Trafficking Events on Instagram: A Deep Multimodal Multilabel Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08920/) (2021)
- [Identifying Illicit Drug Dealers on Instagram with Large-scale Multimodal Data Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08301/) (2021)
- [Unveiling the Potential of Knowledge-Prompted ChatGPT for Enhancing Drug Trafficking Detection on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03699/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [LLMs and Childhood Safety: Identifying Risks and Proposing a Protection Framework for Safe Child-LLM Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11242/) (2025)
- [Exploring Prompt Engineering: A Systematic Review with SWOT Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12843/) (2024)
- [URSimulator: Human-Perception-Driven Prompt Tuning for Enhanced Virtual Urban Renewal via Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14589/) (2024)
- [Gen-AI for User Safety: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06606/) (2024)
- [From Perception to Reasoning: Deep Thinking Empowers Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12861/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Mobile applications (Apps) could expose children to inappropriate themes such as sexual content, violence, and drug use. Maturity rating offers a quick and effective method for potential users, particularly guardians, to assess the maturity levels of apps. Determining accurate maturity ratings for mobile apps is essential to protect children's health in today's saturated digital marketplace. Existing approaches to maturity rating are either inaccurate (e.g., self-reported rating by developers) or costly (e.g., manual examination). In the literature, there are few text-mining-based approaches to maturity rating. However, each app typically involves multiple modalities, namely app description in the text, and screenshots in the image. In this paper, we present a framework for determining app maturity levels that utilize multimodal large language models (MLLMs), specifically ChatGPT-4 Vision. Powered by Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning, our framework systematically leverages ChatGPT-4 to process multimodal app data (i.e., textual descriptions and screenshots) and guide the MLLM model through a step-by-step reasoning pathway from initial content analysis to final maturity rating determination. As a result, through explicitly incorporating CoT reasoning, our framework enables ChatGPT to understand better and apply maturity policies to facilitate maturity rating. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method outperforms all baseline models and other fusion strategies.