BIGO Technology – the Singaporean company selling content moderation services, starting with Indonesia
- BIGO’s AI-powered content moderation system boasts 99 per cent accuracy in identifying illegal content such as pornography and violence
- Company sees an opportunity to meet increased demand for tech that helps combat lies, propaganda and conspiracy theories
A Singaporean company is now offering content review services in overseas markets amid rising demand from governments around the world, and as Beijing continues a drive to clean up its domestic cyberspace.
BIGO Technology, a Singapore-based social media company owned by Chinese live broadcaster YY Inc, is helping the Indonesian government to filter its internet content, and is also in talks with authorities in Vietnam, Egypt, India and the Middle East to export its content review technology, according to James Wang, vice-president of BIGO.
Chinese internet and social media companies have had to develop comprehensive content review capabilities to block content deemed harmful or inappropriate by the Chinese authorities, putting them at the forefront of technologies that are in increasing demand by governments around the world who want to clean up the internet of nefarious and illegal activity.
BIGO’s artificial intelligence-powered content moderation system, which was trained on a huge pool of content to analyse images, boasts 99 per cent accuracy in identifying illegal content such as pornography, violence and terrorism-related information, according to the company. At BIGO, this is supported by a team of 2,000 staffers around the world who also manually review content to ensure nothing is missed.
“Now that we have the technology, we shall show it,” Wang said in a phone interview last week. “I am only a seller of the kitchen knives. It’s their [the customer’s] business whether they use it to cut vegetables or meat.”