Microsoft move to flag content

MICROSOFT Corp turned up the heat on other technology giants yesterday by launching new image and video recognition products which could help it court businesses worried about running ads next to offensive content.

The Washington state company said its new Video Indexer can identify faces, voices and emotions in moving pictures.

Separately, its Custom Vision Search lets companies build apps that recognise images with just a few lines of code.

For brands, knowing what is in the videos they sponsor has become a hot-button issue since major companies began cancelling ad deals with Alphabet Inc’s Google this year over hate speech playing on its subsidiary YouTube.

Video Indexer has similarities to a tool Google launched in March; Amazon.com Inc also said last month it could flag insulting images via a cloudbased service. Microsoft’s latest moves underscore how its focus has evolved from its staple Windows software to the cloud, where it is competing with Amazon to sell data storage and computing power.

Extra analytics like image recognition may prove key to luring web developers.

Interviewed ahead of the company’s developer conference Build, Microsoft senior product director Irving Kwong said: “It’s hard to understand what’s in the video” the longer it is.

He said Video Indexer, which analyses videos far faster than humans can, could help a user “harness and get more out of the video content you have”.

The tools launched in preview yesterday, including a decision recommendation service, have one aim apart from winning business: data.

Microsoft views the tools as a way to put powerful computing into people’s hands and improve the tools at the same time, because processing more data is key to reaching artificial intelligence. – Reuters