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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

+techonomics

Pornhub has begun to use machine learning to automatically tag videos [theverge.com]:

Artificial intelligence has proven to be a dab hand at recognizing what's going on in photos and videos, but the datasets it's usually trained on are pretty genteel. Not so for Pornhub, which announced today [pornhub.com] that it's using machine learning to automatically catalog its videos.

The site is starting small, deploying facial recognition software that will detect 10,000 individual porn stars and tag them in footage. (Usually this information is provided by uploaders and viewers, who will still play a part by verifying the software's choices.) It plans to scan all 5 million of its videos "within the next year," and then move onto more complicated territory: using the software to identify the specific categories videos belong to, like "public" and "blonde."

In a press statement, Pornhub VP Corey Price said the company was joining the trend of firms using AI to "expedite antiquated processes." However, the speed at which PornHub's AI processes the data doesn't seem like it would be an improvement on its current crowdsourced system. While in beta the machine learning software apparently scanned some 50,000 videos in a month. At this rate it would take nearly a decade to scan the entire site, but presumably improvements are being made.

Meanwhile, a security firm has warned that millions of Pornhub users were targeted by "malvertising" [theguardian.com] for more than a year:

Millions of Pornhub users were targeted with a malvertising attack that sought to trick them into installing malware on their PCs, according to infosec firm Proofpoint.

By the time the attack was uncovered, it had been active "for more than a year", Proofpoint said, having already "exposed millions of potential victims in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia" to malware by pretending to be software updates to popular browsers.

Although Pornhub, the world's largest pornography site with 26bn yearly visits according to data from ranking firm Alexa, and its advertising network have shut down the infection pathway, the attack is still ongoing on other sites.

Also at TechCrunch [techcrunch.com], Engadget [engadget.com], and The Sacremento Bee [sacbee.com].

Related: BugReplay - Finding How Ads Get Past the Blockers [soylentnews.org]
Linux Use on Pornhub Surged 14% in 2016 [soylentnews.org]
Malvertising Campaign Finds a Way Around Ad Blockers [soylentnews.org]
Pornhub's Newest Videos Can Reach Out and Touch You [soylentnews.org]

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