Akismet does an amazing job at detecting spam comments. But comments are not the only form of spam these days. What if I wanted something like akismet to automatically detect porn images on a social networking site which allows users to upload their pics, avatars, etc?
There are already a few image based search engines as well as face recognition stuff available so I am assuming it wouldn't be rocket science and it could be done. However, I have no clue regarding how that stuff works and how I should go about it if I want to develop it from scratch.
How should I get started?
Is there any open source project for this going on?
This was written in 2000, not sure if the state of the art in porn detection has advanced at all, but I doubt it.
http://www.dansdata.com/pornsweeper.htm
PORNsweeper seems to have some ability to distinguish pictures of people from pictures of things that aren't people, as long as the pictures are in colour. It is less successful at distinguishing dirty pictures of people from clean ones.
With the default, medium sensitivity, if Human Resources sends around a picture of the new chap in Accounts, you've got about a 50% chance of getting it. If your sister sends you a picture of her six-month-old, it's similarly likely to be detained.
It's only fair to point out amusing errors, like calling the Mona Lisa porn, if they're representative of the behaviour of the software. If the makers admit that their algorithmic image recogniser will drop the ball 15% of the time, then making fun of it when it does exactly that is silly.
But PORNsweeper only seems to live up to its stated specifications in one department - detection of actual porn. It's half-way decent at detecting porn, but it's bad at detecting clean pictures. And I wouldn't be surprised if no major leaps were made in this area in the near future.