It is an important question: Can NSFW AI catch every bit of explicit content on the web, now that platforms rely more and more on automated vigilance? The global content moderation market was worth about $7.3 billion in 2023, much of which subsidized the creation of AI tools that screen out lewd material. Companies like Google and Meta have poured tens of millions into AI research each year, but the limitations are still in force. A typical precision for identifying explicit content is 94%, which gives a lot of space to making mistakes. SP: There are still false negatives because some of the explicit stuff is going through and there will always be false positives.
Including at its essence teaching AI models on a huge amount of data — frequently into the millions or tens-of-millions (or even billions) for labeled images, videos and text; code words trained to match that explicitly with adult concepts. But these systems are confused by the nuances of context (e.g. artistic or educational content). While AI tools missed only 8% of explicit content in a Stanford University study, subtle factors like lighting and framing can critically affect how accurately algorithms recognize prohibited activity. Even still, porn detection models—even those that use AI—have been notoriously inconsistent across languages and regions, so universal enforcement would not come easy.
These barriers are underscored by high-profile examples. Facebook, for example, had its AI moderation uncovering 38% of the cases where violent live streams were streaming while it should not have been able to slip through and was criticized by public voices with legal attention in Feb. 2020 However, breakthroughs are still happening as AI models begin to capture context in the form of transformer-based architectures that understand better how objects connect with one another within a scene. Although there has been a 15% increase in detection accuracy over the last two years, perfection eludes us.
Instead, they want hybrid systems — which still employ lots of machines to do things like porn removal at scale but with humans standing by when the robots fail. Like Del Harvey, Twitter's former head of trust and safety said in May: "AI can do the heavy lifting but people are very necessary for those judgement calls where cultural context really matters." Even with advancements, it is very unlikely that NSFW AI will be able to accurately filter through the diversity of online content and intent. Efficiency versus precision: an ongoing discussion in the industry.
However, despite its flaws AI powered moderation still plays an essential role for platforms policing billions of daily interactions. Not whether nsfw ai will be able to identify all adult content (as the prevailing evidence suggests that it cannot) but rather, if this technology can advance quickly enough to do so. Databases will increase and algorithms become more robust, but human nature is far from fixed — the innumerable forms of expression are always only approachable. Ultimately, it is most probable that the future will be some type of balance where AI does much or even all of the routine filtering and people take care of edge cases to try to ensure safety and fairness at scale.