A win in a niche tech awards has shed light on a Gloucestershire-headquartered firm at the forefront of the race to development software, which will make online a safer place.
Image Analyzer’s AI-powered ‘visual risk moderation technology’ can remove more than 90 per cent of ‘manifestly illegal and harmful images, videos, and live-streamed footage’ before it ever reaches a website or moderation queues.
Its work presents not just an antidote to the scourge of social media and other platforms worldwide, but a potentially enormous commercial opportunity for the small team of 10 at the Quedgeley business.
Cris Pikes, a serial tech entrepreneur, chief executive officer and founder of Image Analyzer, said: ‘We are delighted to have won the Computing Magazine award for best emerging technology in AI.
‘Online organisations are tackling a huge number of images and videos uploaded by more and more users.
‘Human moderators can no longer cope with the sheer volume and the impending legislation is only adding to the pressure.
‘Automated content moderation allows organisations to scale their efforts and demonstrate to the relevant authorities that they have put systems and processes in place to protect their users and employees from illegal and harmful content posted to their sites.’
Mr Pikes said Image Analyzer had chosen to locate in Gloucestershire because of all its burgeoning cyber community offered, and the good communications links.
Impending changes to UK and EU online safety laws look set to legally oblige website operators to swiftly remove illegal or harmful content posted to their websites, or risk large fines and similar changes are afoot in the US.
Image Analyzer holds US and European patents for its AI-powered content moderation technology, IAVIS, which identifies visual risks in milliseconds, with near zero false positives.
