Tech that detects 94% of IS videos

INTERNET giants will have little excuse for allowing extremist propaganda on their websites after the Home Office unveiled new technology to detect hate content.

Web firms have been told to increase efforts to remove terror-related posts after the UK was hit by attacks in London and Manchester last year. All had an ‘online component’, the Home Office said.

Now the Government has revealed advanced technology that aims to automatically detect extremist videos before they become publicly available online.

Tests have shown the £600,000 tool can identify 94 per cent of the entire content in Islamic State propaganda videos. The breakthrough came as a Home Office analysis revealed IS supporters used more than 400 separate online platforms to pump out propaganda last year.

The Home Office said it would share the technology with firms to combat the abuse of their platforms. Home Secretary Amber Rudd welcomed the development as she visited San Francisco for talks with technology giants. She said: ‘Those who commit terrorist attacks on our streets are increasingly influenced by what they see online. I hope this new technology the Home Office has helped develop can support others to go further and faster.’

Using ‘advanced machine learning’, the technology analyses terror videos to pick out ‘subtle signals’ and determine whether it is IS propaganda or something else, such as a news reports. The system can be adapted to look for other violent extremist content.

Dr Marc Warner, chief executive of ASI Data Science, which developed the new model, said major organisations such as Google and Facebook could not ‘solve this problem alone’.