Google’s Jigsaw unit, as part of a larger effort to battle online trolling, said earlier today that it was releasing a new tool called Perspective, software that uses machine learning to detect harassment and abuse online.

While Jigsaw and its software are not new — it’s been around in some form since 2010, though with a different name, and Jigsaw software has even been used to spot potential ISIS recruits — this new Perspective API makes it available to developers who want to use and build on top of the software. The software works by determining the “toxicity” of online comments, a scale that has been established by mining millions of comments from the web and then presenting them to panels of 10 people (humans!) at a clip to get…

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