YouTube claims AI tech now finds 83% of extremist videos
Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube has said it automatically caught and removed 83% of extremist videos using its machine learning technology in September, compared with 75% in August, according to a report from the provider. The study also revealed YouTube has added 35 non-governmental organisations to its Trusted Flagger initiative to help create policies on hate speech and radicalisation, and is expanding its Creators for Change programme. In addition, content featuring "controversial religious or supremacist content" is stripped of comments, recommendations and monetisations, and is preceded by a warning.

YouTube has published its second report on how it's dealing with extremist videos since announcing plans to deal with the problem back in June, after brand safety concerns caused a number of advertisers to pull their spend from YouTube.

It reports that 83 per cent of the extremist videos removed from the platform in September were automatically caught by the machine learning technology it introduced in June before they received a single human flag – compared to 75 per cent in August.

YouTube says the technology has been trained to recognise this content using over 1m videos, which have been manually reviewed by its staff to pick out examples of terrorist and violent content.

"Inevitably, both humans and machines make mistakes, and as we have increased the volume of videos for review by our teams, we have made some errors," reads YouTube's report. "We know we can get better and we are committed to making sure our teams are taking action on the right content. We are working on ways to educate those who share video meant to document or expose violence on how to add necessary context."

The company also provided updates on the other approaches it's using to tackle this problem. Videos that aren't illegal, but do contain 'controversial religious or supremacist content', have been kept on the platform, but with a warning interstitial beforehand, and with recommendations, monetisations and comments all turned off. YouTube is investing more in its Creators for Change programme, which supports the makers of videos attempting to tackle social issues, with new chapters opening in Israel and Spain.

Finally, the Trusted Flagger inititative has added 35 NGOs (Non-Government Organisations), including King's College London and Indonesia's Wahid Institute, to help advise YouTube on policies around issues like hate speech and radicalisation, and to improve the training of its systems by flagging content.

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