Facing flak for failure to block the live broadcast of the New Zealand terrorist attack last week, Facebook on Thursday said that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools were not “perfect” to detect the horrific video.
Vowing to improve its technology, the social networking giant,however, ruled out adding a time delay to Facebook Live, similar to thebroadcast delay sometimes used by TV stations.
“There are millions of Live broadcasts daily, whichmeans a delay would not help address the problem due to the sheer number ofvideos,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity, said in astatement.
“More importantly, given the importance of userreports, adding a delay would only further slow down videos getting reported,reviewed and first responders being alerted to provide help on theground,” Rosen added.
Strapped with a GoPro camera to his head, the gunmanbroadcast graphic footage of the New Zealand shooting via Facebook Live for 17minutes, which was later shared in millions on other social media platforms,including Twitter and YouTube.
Fifty people were killed and dozens injured in the shootingsat Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Avenue Masjid in Christchurch on March 15after 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant opened indiscriminate firings.
The circulation of the video on social media platformsattracted widespread criticism from different quarters.
In a letter to CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube andMicrosoft, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson asked thetechnology companies to brief the US Congress on March 27 regarding theirresponse to dissemination of the video on their platforms.
Thompson also warned the technology companies that unlessthey do better in removing violent content, the Congress could considerpolicies to bar such content on social media.
Facebook on Thursday said it was exploring how AI could helpit react faster to this kind of content on a live streamed video.
“AI has made massive progress over the years and inmany areas, which has enabled us to proactively detect the vast majority of thecontent we remove. But it’s not perfect.
“However, this particular video did not trigger ourautomatic detection systems,” Rosen said, referring to the New Zealandattack video. IANS