Google launches new machine learning api to find child sexual abuse images online

The technology giant Google has once again confirmed its commitment to fight against abuse on the internet and, especially, against the dissemination of images of child sexual abuse on the Internet, launching a new machine learning tool. This new API based on advanced Artificial Intelligence will facilitate the very hard task of manual reviewers and is available free of charge to service providers, NGOs, technology companies and other institutions involved in the fight.

Machine learning against child sexual abuse

In a post published just a few days ago and signed by Nikola Todorovic, Google's Director of Engineering, and Abhi Chaudhuri, Google's Product Manager, the company has confirmed its commitment, for almost two decades, to fight image dissemination. of child sexual abuse, "one of the worst imaginable abuses."

To this end, Google has launched a new machine learning API, available completely free of charge upon explicit request to organizations involved in this fight. Supported by new advances in advanced artificial intelligence, this tool will significantly improve the detection of images of sexual abuse of minors on the Internet, since it not only speeds up the detection of content that is already known, but also allows detection of “content that is not has previously confirmed as CSAM. ”

Another of the greatest achievements of this new API is that it allows " helping reviewers to sort through many images prioritizing the most likely CSAM content for review." Can you imagine how it should affect people to work day after day visualizing and checking this type of images? However, despite this great effort, the company itself acknowledges at the end of its publication that " technology alone is not a panacea for this social challenge" so, sadly, human intervention will still continue to be necessary to reduce this type of abuse.

Below, I have fully translated the note published about it by Google:

Those organizations interested in using Google's Content Safety API service and thus help in the fight against the propagation of images of sexual abuse of minors on the network, you can request their free participation to the company by completing this form.