6 things image moderation can do you might not know about
June 24, 2024 | UGCThese days, running an online platform is no small feat, especially when it comes to moderating the flood of images that are uploaded daily. In fact, it’s estimated that around 3.2 billion images are uploaded to the internet on any given day. So whether you’re managing an e-commerce site and worried about product image authenticity, an online dating app striving to keep profiles genuine and respectful, or a social media platform battling against the tide of inappropriate content, image moderation is a critical piece of the trust and safety puzzle. The good news? Image moderation technology has come a long way.
Gone are the days when image moderation was limited to flagging basic things like nudity or weapons. Today’s tools, including those offered by WebPurify, are equipped with cutting-edge capabilities that do much more to ensure user safety and content integrity. From checking metadata to verify the authenticity of photos and protect user privacy to scanning embedded text and QR codes for hidden risks, even detecting deepfake and synthetic images, modern image moderation is incredibly sophisticated.
These advancements mean that platforms can now address nuanced challenges with precision, protecting intellectual property, detecting deepfakes, and combining the speed of AI with the discernment of human reviewers. In this blog, we dive into six impressive feats our image moderation service accomplishes and that you might not know about, showing how these powerful tools keep your platform safe and trustworthy for all users.
1. Metadata Checks
In the early days of content moderation, image review was restricted to scanning images for nudity, weapons and other obvious violations of community standards. These days, however, Image moderation goes beyond just analyzing the visible content in pictures; it also includes checking metadata.
Metadata in images contains critical information such as the date and time the photo was taken, GPS coordinates, and device details. Advanced moderation tools scan this metadata to verify authenticity and detect anomalies that might suggest manipulation. This process helps in maintaining the integrity of content by ensuring that metadata has not been tampered with.
What’s more, metadata checks protect user privacy by ensuring that sensitive information like location data is not inadvertently shared. This is particularly useful for journalists, for instance, who may need to protect the location and identity of the people they photograph.
2. IP Infringement
Intellectual property infringement is a growing concern in the age of user-generated content, and generative AI technology is only amplifying these concerns. Modern image moderation tools like WebPurify’s suite of solutions are equipped to tackle this by using image recognition technology to quickly identify copyrighted material.
These tools compare uploaded images against extensive databases of known copyrighted content. When potential infringements are detected, it triggers automated alerts, allowing for platforms or their moderation teams like us to take quick action and prevent IP violations.
This ensures that the rights of content creators are protected and reduces the risk of legal issues for platforms hosting user-generated content.
3. Embedded Text
Embedded text in images, which can range from captions and watermarks to hidden messages, is another area where modern image moderation excels. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, WebPurify’s moderation tools detect and read text embedded within images.
This extracted text is then analyzed for inappropriate language, hate speech, or other violations of a platform’s content policies. In more nuanced cases where automatic rejection or approval isn’t clear cut to the AI, our automated systems flag images with questionable text for human review, ensuring that no harmful or offensive content slips through the cracks.
4. QR Codes
QR codes embedded in images can link to external websites or contain hidden information, posing potential security risks. Our image moderation tools are designed to identify and decode QR codes within images. They check the URLs for malicious content, phishing scams, or other inappropriate material, ensuring your users aren’t directed to harmful or non-compliant websites.
5. AI + Human Image Moderation
Combining artificial intelligence with human moderation is the key to ensuring absolute accuracy and efficiency in image moderation. We use our AI algorithms to quickly scan and filter out obvious violations, drastically reducing the volume of images needing human review. Our human moderators then step in to review the borderline cases or those flagged by AI for nuanced decision-making.
This method also allows for continuous learning, as AI systems improve from human feedback, ultimately reducing false positives and negatives and ensuring more accurate moderation outcomes.
6. Synthetic Images and Deepfakes
The rise of synthetic images and deepfakes presents a unique challenge for moderators, who are learning techniques for generative AI content moderation in parallel with the technology’s evolution. At WebPurify, we’ve developed an advanced AI model that is trained to detect subtle inconsistencies and artifacts characteristic of deepfakes and other synthetic images at scale.
Our model can analyze the patterns that are difficult for humans to discern, such as unnatural pixel arrangements or inconsistencies in lighting and shadows, with consistent precision and accuracy. When suspected synthetic images are flagged by our model, they undergo further verification, ensuring your users have the latest and most robust protection from misinformation and manipulated content.