AI content moderation allows companies to reduce costs and improve safety by minimizing risk. It also ensures that all content meets community guidelines.
PC Mag reports that in 2019 Facebook’s AI moderation systems successfully spotted 99.9% of spam, 99.3% of terrorist propaganda, and 98% of child nudity or sexual exploitation images.
What is AI in content moderation
As social media platforms become increasingly reliant on user-generated content, it becomes more difficult for human moderators to keep up. This is due to the large volumes of indecent and harmful content that must be reviewed. This can lead to stress and burnout for human moderators, and it is not always possible to catch every instance of harmful UGC. AI content moderation offers a solution to this problem by improving the scalability of moderation efforts. It can also help to reduce the amount of time and effort required for human moderators by identifying and flagging suspect content for review.
However, there are some significant challenges with using AI in content moderation. First, there is the lack of transparency around algorithmic decision-making. It is unclear how an AI system determines whether a piece of content is safe or not, and what data it uses to make that determination. This lack of transparency can lead to inconsistencies in the way that different AI systems make judgment calls about content.
Second, there is the difficulty of dealing with complex and nuanced content. For example, some users may use generative AI to create images that appear to be of offensive or NSFW subjects, but are actually completely benign. This can be hard for AI image recognition tools to detect, and it is even harder for human moderators to discern.
Finally, there is the challenge of dealing with language. While AI systems like ChatGPT and GPT-4 are getting better at interpreting text, they are still far from perfect. Generative AI is able to create pieces of art that look like images of violence, weapons, blood, and nudity – all common NSFW subjects that pose serious threats to brands and communities.
How does AI moderate online content
Social media companies are facing increasing pressure to keep their sites free from extremism, racism and misinformation, and to remove harmful content as soon as it’s posted. With large numbers of people needed to look through thousands or millions of pieces of user-generated content, companies are increasingly turning to AI for help.
AI moderation tools are based on machine learning, where an algorithm is taught to recognise certain types of content through exposure to training datasets. A human labeller (or multiple people) then evaluates the results to check if they are correct. This process is known as intercoder reliability.
Despite its limitations, AI is now used to moderate online content for forums and comments, dating websites, e-commerce platforms and even video platforms. It can detect and delete explicit or inappropriate visual content and can assess the sentiment or intent of text content.
However, some critics argue that AI is not always accurate or effective and that it cannot fully replace the work of human moderators. They say that it is hard for AI to understand cultural and social context, and it struggles with concepts like sarcasm, irony, or nuanced language. In addition, it can be fooled by simple hacks and has a tendency to bias towards negative content.
Despite its limitations, AI can still be useful in speeding up the moderation process and helping to identify potentially harmful content more quickly. It can also be used to check whether a piece of content is likely to violate a company’s terms of service, for example by looking at keywords or detecting repetitive patterns. It can also be used to spot potential copyright infringements, by checking that images and videos have been appropriately licensed.
Can AI detect harmful online content
As more and more people create content online, it’s important that platforms can filter out harmful material. This is why many companies are turning to AI to help with their content moderation needs. This can include detecting harmful imagery, text, or videos. The idea is that by using AI, content can be filtered more quickly and with greater accuracy than humans would be able to.
Detecting harmful content isn’t easy. Even with the best human moderators, it can be difficult to spot all types of problematic content. There are also laws governing what can and cannot be posted that vary across continents, nations, and regions. For example, what may be considered an offensive slur in one language might not be in another. This is where AI can be extremely useful.
AI can be used for both pre- and post-moderation. It can be used for things like hash matching, where a fingerprint of an image is compared to a database of harmful images to identify potential harm. It can also be used for keyword filters, where certain keywords are flagged to alert human moderators to potentially harmful content. This can be especially helpful in languages where a large number of harmful words may not be in the standard dictionary. For instance, a company may need to create its own list of toxic slurs in Assamese to detect harmful content there.
It’s important to note that even the best AI tools aren’t perfect. They can still be tricked into performing undesirable tasks by bad actors. This is why it’s critical to use AI as an aid for human moderation rather than a replacement. For example, AI can be used for simple recognition tasks, such as determining whether or not an image contains a nipple (which may violate rules related to sexism or prudery). More sophisticated algorithms, such as the latest large language models, can be taught to produce desirable outputs, such as instructions on how to make a bomb.
Is AI effective in content moderation
Every time people create content online, from social media posts to blog comments and reviews to videos, there is the potential for harmful or offensive material. And while it’s not possible to prevent everyone from creating ill-advised material, many platforms use AI moderation tools to remove the most problematic content before users see it.
This involves the use of artificial intelligence algorithms that analyze uploaded images, text, and video. They look for specific items that are deemed inappropriate or harmful to viewers, such as nudity, violence, gore, and hate symbols. They can also scan content for illegal activities. Once this is done, the AI can then determine if it is harmful and, if necessary, flag it for human review.
AI moderation algorithms are trained using data that has been categorized by humans, so they know what to look for when scanning user-generated content. However, even the best AI algorithms can make mistakes. So, while it is an effective tool for removing some types of content, it’s not as accurate or reliable when it comes to detecting all kinds of harmful UGC.
This is why human moderators will likely always be needed for the most challenging types of online content moderation. It can be difficult to detect fake or misleading information, and to recognize sarcasm and irony. Plus, laws governing online censorship differ between countries and continents, making it difficult to know what is considered acceptable or unacceptable.
What are the benefits of AI in content moderation
The benefits of using AI in content moderation include the ability to reduce costs, increase accuracy, and improve productivity. Additionally, AI can help to prevent human error by automating repetitive and tedious tasks. It can also detect and identify patterns that may be indicative of harmful content. AI can also be used to monitor user-generated content in real-time, allowing businesses to quickly respond and take action.
However, there are some concerns about the use of AI in content moderation. One concern is that it can lead to job loss, as AI systems can replace human moderators. Another concern is that AI systems can be biased or lack context, which can result in inaccurate decisions. Finally, it is difficult to understand how AI systems make decisions, which can lead to privacy concerns.
In spite of these concerns, there are many advantages to using AI in content moderation. For example, AI can help to reduce costs by reducing the number of human moderators needed. It can also increase accuracy by identifying patterns that may be indicative of harmful content. In addition, AI can be used to analyze images and videos more efficiently than humans, which can speed up the process.
One of the biggest challenges in content moderation is the scale and pace of the task. Social media platforms receive huge volumes of user-generated content, and there is pressure to remove harmful content quickly. This has led to an increased need for scalable solutions, such as AI. AI offers the speed, capacity, and scale necessary to moderate large amounts of content, and it can help to limit the psychological impact that moderating this content can have on human moderators.