Instagram has announced that it is stepping up its anti-bullying efforts by using AI to detect signs of bullying in photos and captions …
Instagram last year began using machine-learning to identify words and phrases in comments that might indicate bullying, and The Verge reports that the company is now aiming to do the same visually.
The potential for social media to be used for bullying has prompted most platforms to create anti-bullying initiatives.
Today, it announced that it will use AI to “proactively detect bullying” before sending content to human moderators for review.
The new feature will roll out to users in the coming weeks, launching in time for October’s National Bullying Prevention Month in the US and just before Anti-Bullying Week in the UK. The same technology is also being added to live videos to filter comments there as well.
It isn’t clear what visual clues the system might look for, though the company did give one example.
Instagram is also launching a ‘kindness’ filter, which overlays photos with kind comments in multiple languages.
The official website of the US anti-bullying project is stopbullying.gov. It says that early intervention by adults has been shown to be effective.
The UK site is bullying.co.uk, with a week-long push in November. The site explains Instagram’s advice on responding to bullying.
Parents, school staff, and other adults in the community can help kids prevent bullying by talking about it, building a safe school environment, and creating a community-wide bullying prevention strategy.
Instagram says the anti-bullying work is part of its overall Digital Wellbeing program.
Photo: Shutterstock
