Visual Content Moderation: VISUA Presents an AI Solution

Many online platforms facilitate the ability to share and consume user created content. This high level of accessibility and openness has unfortunately come with the downside of a great deal of undesirable content appearing online. This can include more mundane examples such as content which violates copyright laws to actively harmful content which highlights violent acts or promotes hate-speech. As the majority of the content which users generate is visual it has become increasingly difficult for platforms to be able to effectively moderate the content which is distributed on their platforms. In this regard, a recent academic article has noted that, "Moderation tasks are often laborious, complex, and even if semi-automated, they involve high-consequence human decisions that affect the safety and popular perception of the platforms".

Moderating visual content is an important task for platforms so that they are able to ensure the safety of their users and ensure that they are compliant with the relevant regulatory bodies. As was noted, this is a difficult and demanding task that only becomes more complex with the nuances which visual media bring to the equation. In addition to these complexities, the volume of content which users generate is only continuing to increase and humans are not able to moderate such a substantial amount of content in a reasonable amount of time.

VISUA's Visual-AI Solution to Visual Content Moderation

In order to be able to effectively and efficiently moderate visual content at a large scale an AI solution is required. This is why VISUA has developed artificial intelligence that is capable of moderating visual content with computer vision. Computer Vision which is also called Visual-AI is a field within artificial intelligence that allows computers to be able to extract usable data from visual media. As a result, AI can consume visual content at machine speed and moderate this content to detect unwanted aspects which it may include. Visual-AI can therefore allow a platform to operate optimally and host user generated content without falling victim to malicious or otherwise unwanted visual content.

The Visual-AI which VISUA has developed allows for integration into existing systems using two methods depending on the needs of the platform. VISUA's API can be used to control the moderation which the Visual-AI performs as well as control and analyze the data which it produces. Batched media and task processing provide the API with a high degree of accessible functionality for a process of integration that is both fast and easy. VISUA also provides a no-code option for the use of their Visual-AI for the purpose of visual content moderation. This requires that a platform provide VISUA with access to their data so that VISUA can process it and organize the data for display. The content can have certain rules applied to it so that infringing content is immediately removed or flagged for further review.

The complex and nuanced nature of visual media means that edge-cases will always exist. Although Visual-AI can identify potentially suspect or infringing elements, these edge-cases, which are a minority, will require that a human makes the final decision on the acceptability of the content. However, the process of visual moderation allows all the good content to be confirmed as safe, while the majority of infringing content can be flagged as unsafe and blocked. This ultimately massively reduces the workload on trust and safety teams, as the number of questionable cases that a human will be required to review is reduced to a more manageable volume. VISUA is also able to deliver a complete visual content moderation service which will abide by the guidelines and rules of a platform. This allows VISUA to handle the removal or blocking of content from a platform and drastically reduce the quantity of cases which require human decision making.

Businesses that trade in Europe should be aware of the new European Digital Services Act. This act in conjunction with the Digital Markets Act introduces new responsibilities for online businesses and online platforms. These regulations were created with the goal of making the online world safer and more open for the benefit of the consumer. The requirements which the acts impose place a greater degree of responsibility on the shoulders of online businesses to ensure that they are not disseminating information or content which could be harmful in any way.

Final Thoughts

The realm of online content is enormous and more user generated content is constantly being uploaded every second of every day. Online platforms bear the responsibility of moderating this content to manage the unfortunate reality of unwanted content being disseminated through their platforms. As much of the content which users generate is visual, computer vision is up to the task of moderating the massive amounts of content which users are generating and sharing. Visual content moderation using Visual-AI is able to process visual media at machine speeds making the process of visual content moderation both efficient and practical.