One Female's Feat

A recent article in the Guardian described how a computer-savvy woman perfected an artificial intelligence (AI) program to deal with a growing problem on the internet. For some strange reason an increasing number of women are receiving what are called “dick pix.” These are photos emailed to them of a penis—supposedly that of the sender. These pix are often startling, shocking, and most often unwelcome to the women.

I won't try here to guess what's behind this trend. It's as mystifying and bizarre to me as are many practices on today's social media. The anonymity offered by the internet seems to encourage a certain type of person to say and do offensive things that they'd probably restrain from doing, face to face.

This lady decided she'd had enough of dick pix sent her way—she'd opened up her email or Instagram or Facebook account a few times too often, to see a gross photo. She was disgusted at this practice. So she sent out an invitation on the internet for anyone (presumably mostly men) to send her photos of their genitalia. She then used the many kinds of penile pictures she collected to train an AI program to recognize what they were—rather than, say, a handsome eggplant—and to immediately delete them.

In time, her AI program achieved 95% accuracy at expunging dick pix on Instagram. Wouldn't many women agreeably download such an app, which would allow them to turn on their smartphones without cringing? Those few women who enjoyed the prurient pix could simply reject the app and continue their titillating tradition.

This lady's remarkable accomplishment brings two thoughts to my mind: the first is that she refutes the common assumption that most computer geeks are male. She is evidence to the contrary.

The second thought is more a question: If a lone (female) wolf can accomplish this AI feat, what's holding back Facebook, Instagram, and Google from achieving something similar? Their computer geeks are legion and they've repeatedly demonstrated their astounding AI accomplishments. Many people who use these social media—including governmental authorities—have demanded that they do something to counter or check the various internet attacks launched by nefarious characters, with a definite lack of response on the part of the tech giants.

In what appears to be one meaningless response, Facebook has described how it formed a group of people whose job is to monitor online postings, in order to block the more offensive ones. These poor Facebook folks are known to suffer from the trauma of viewing despicable postings, day after day. Is this the best that Facebook can do—distressing and depressing a bunch of loyal employees? Where is their amazing skill at creating software algorithms? How is it that one woman can show them up? Could it be a lack of passion on their part? Their passion—and accomplishments—seem to be more aligned at making money from ads, rather than protecting their users.