Instagram Targets Offensive Comments With AI

The system, called DeepText, is based on recent advances in artificial intelligence and a concept called word embeddings, which means it is designed to mimic the way language works in our brains. When the system encounters a new word, it does what we do and tries to deduce meaning from all the other words around it.

White, for instance, means something completely different when it’s near the words snow, Sox, House, or power. DeepText is designed to operate the way a human thinks, and to improve over time, like a human too.

The machines give each comment a score between 0 and 1, which is a measure of Instagram’s confidence that the comment is offensive or inappropriate. Above a certain threshold, the comment gets zapped. As with spam, the comments are rated based both on a semantic analysis of the text and factors such as the relationship between the commenter and the poster, as well as the commenter’s history. Something typed by someone you’ve never met is more likely to be graded poorly than something typed by a friend.

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