Alibaba launches AI tool to fight multi-lingual audio pornography

(ECNS) - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to fight spam messages including pornographic content in audio form using voiceprint recognition technology.

The service is available in Chinese, Japanese, English, Russian and other languages, but it can also recognize local dialects used in Hunan, Hubei, Henan, northeast China, Sichuan and Guangdong.

Alibaba's AI service can work with both offline files and real-time voice streaming. The system will first convert speech into text and then analyze it against spam patterns or keywords to determine whether the original audio file contains pornographic material. For non-semantic sounds, the system can also recognize illegal content through analyzing voiceprints.

The system can improve its abilities through machine learning and work with more foreign languages or dialects, Science and Technology Daily reported.

"You can think of it as a robot, but like a child who needs constant feeding, training and learning," said an Alibaba security technician, adding it can improve its Cantonese proficiency based on Cantonese TV dramas.

In June this year, the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications said many online platforms were found to spread vulgar and obscene content via ASMR videos, which claim to induce a tingling feeling in the viewer. AI-based voice recognition technology is expected to play a more prominent role in addressing this problem.