Microsoft (Photo : Reuters)
In its crackdown effort to rid the Internet of child pornography, tech giant Microsoft recently announced that it will release a cloud version of the PhotoDNA service that tracks down images of sexual abuse on children.
PhotoDNA is a free technology from Microsoft that has the capability to detect images of child sexual abuse. PhotoDNA has been in operation for a number of years already, in fact social network giants like Facebook and Twitter uses this technology to purge their sites of unlawful photos depicting child pornography.
According to Engadget, the original version of PhotoDNA is somewhat cumbersome to use since it needs to be installed into the company's own server and network in order for it to work. This method requires additional manpower that has the technical capability to run program.
The introduction of PhotoDNA on cloud server means that the technology can be easily accessed by those who wants to use it. PhotoDNA is hosted on Microsoft Azure platform and any are open to sign up in order to use the free service.
According to The Next Web, Microsoft claims that more than 1.8 billion images are being uploaded on the Internet on a daily basis. The company added that more than 720,000 of those are illegal photos.
PhotoDNA works by compiling images of child sex abuse from different organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and converts those images into numerical values creating a database comprised of those numbers. Once those values are uploaded on the system database, PhotoDNA can scour the entirety of the Internet looking for images that has similar or almost identical values.
Additionally, Microsoft said that it has been working to upgrade PhotoDNA's algorithm in order to enhance its detection capabilities. The company said that the new version of PhotoDNA is 1,000 times faster than the previous one.
