‘Mind-reading’ device to detect porn could speed China’s policing of illicit content, say researchers

Name: Inside a Chinese internet censorship centre
Uploaded: 2022-06-20T01:00:16.000Z
Duration: 3 min 34 s
Description: Inside a Chinese internet censorship centre

Electrical engineering team combine the power of humans and AI to create a prototype device that sounds an alarm when an indecent image appears

But an observer says there is no law to regulate the use of such objects, which could be used by censors, or to protect the data they collect

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Sample images used by Chinese researchers to train a “porn police” helmet that can read people’s mind to detect pornography. Photo: Beijing Jiaotong University

Stephen Chen

Published: 9:00am, 20 Jun 2022Updated: 9:13am, 20 Jun 2022

A device that can detect when a man is watching pornography by “reading his mind” has been developed in China, according to the research team in Beijing behind the project.

The device, which could speed up the work of censors trying to spot indecent images on the Chinese internet, is worn on the head by the subject and can pick up a spike in the brainwaves triggered by explicit content, according to the researchers.

Fifteen male university students aged between 20 and 25 volunteered to wear the item while in front of a computer screen.

Each time a sensitive photo appeared, an alarm went off.

03:34

Inside a Chinese internet censorship centre

The prototype device proved that human-machine collaboration was feasible “for bad information detection”, said Xu Jianjun, director of the electrical engineering experiment centre at Beijing Jiaotong University, in a peer-reviewed paper published in the domestic Journal of Electronic Measurement and Instrumentation on June 13.

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