#google’s #ai video classifiers are easily fooled by subliminal images

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Google is currently in a bit of hot water with with some of the world’s most powerful companies, who are peeved that their ads have been appearing next to racist, anti-semitic, and terrorist videos on YouTube. Recent reports brought the issue to light and in response, brands have been pulling ad campaigns while Google piles more AI resources into verifying videos’ content. But the problem is, the search giant’s current algorithms might just not be up to the task.
A recent research paper, published by the University of Washington and spotted by Quartz, makes the problem clear. It tests Google’s Cloud Video Intelligence API, which is used to automatically classify the content of videos using object recognition. (The system is currently in…