Keeping online content safe isn’t just a priority – it’s a necessity. For businesses, AI-driven content moderation tools have become critical in protecting users and ensuring compliance with ever-evolving regulations. One of the most vital tasks in this space? Filtering adult content. Today’s AI-powered tools offer real-time protection, helping platforms stay safe and user-friendly.

From social media and e-commerce to educational websites, dating platforms and digital communities, adult content detection serves two primary goals: meeting legal obligations and safeguarding user trust. Whether it’s about protecting young users or maintaining a brand’s image, the stakes are higher than ever. Below, we explore why adult content filtering matters, which businesses need it most, and five leading AI tools to help you stay compliant and safe.

Why Adult Content Detection Is Essential

As regulatory frameworks tighten – EU’s Digital Services Act, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the U.S., and the Online Safety Bill in the UK – platforms are legally bound to protect their users. Beyond compliance, adult content detection is crucial for fostering a safe and welcoming online experience.

This process involves removing explicit user-generated content from platforms where it doesn’t belong. AI-driven algorithms excel here, scanning images, videos, and live streams in real-time to catch explicit material with impressive accuracy.

Businesses like social media platforms, e-commerce marketplaces, dating apps, and educational websites face unique challenges. For platforms catering to minors or educational spaces, the stakes are even higher. Balancing between user safety and freedom of expression is no easy task, but modern AI models are stepping up to solve it.

Who Needs Adult Content Detection?

Adult content detection isn’t just for social media giants. Any platform that allows user-generated content needs a strategy for keeping things clean. Here’s a quick look at who benefits most:

  • Dating platforms – ensuring shared photos and messages remain appropriate
  • E-commerce sites – keeping user-uploaded product photos and reviews family-friendly.
  • Online communities – gaming forums, interest groups, and other communities with visual content sharing
  • Educational platforms – protecting minors and maintaining professional environments
  • Social media and messaging apps – where user-generated content flows constantly

Top 5 Tools for Adult Content Detection

1. Imagga Adult Content Detection 

The Imagga Adult Content Detection model has been around for a while, but was previously known as NSFW detection. After significant improvements, it has now achieved a whooping 98% in recall for explicit content detection and 92.5% overall model accuracy. The new model has been trained on an expanded and diversified training dataset consisting of millions of images of different types of adult content. 

The model is able to differentiate content in three categories with high precision: explicit, suggestive, and safe. It thus provides reliable detection for both suggestive visuals containing underwear or lingerie and for explicit nudes and sexual content. The adult content detection operates in real time, preventing inappropriate content from going live unnoticed.  Imagga offers both a Cloud API and on-premise deployment. 

With a stellar recall rate of 98% for explicit content and 92.5% accuracy overall, Imagga Adult Content Detection sets new standards in content moderation. 

2. Google Cloud Vision AI

The Cloud Vision API was launched by Google in 2015 and is based on advanced computer vision models. At first, it was targeting mainly image analysis like object and optical character recognition. Today it also boasts a special tool for detecting explicit content called SafeSearch. It works with both local and remote image files. 

The Cloud Vision API is powered by the wide resource network of Google, which fuels its accuracy in adult content detection too. SafeSearch detects inappropriate content in five categories — adult, spoof, medical, violence, and racy. The API is highly scalable and can process significant amounts of detection requests, which makes it attractive for platforms with large-scale user-generated content. 

The Google Cloud Vision AI has a readily available API (REST and RPC) and can be easily integrated with other Google Cloud services. 

3. Amazon Rekognition 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced Amazon Rekognition in 2016. It provides computer vision tools for the cloud, including content moderation. Amazon Rekognition can detect and remove inappropriate, unwanted, or offensive, which spans adult content.

Powered by a deep learning model, Amazon Recognition can identify unsafe or inappropriate content in both images and videos with high precision and speed. The identification can be based on general standards, or can be business-specific. In particular, businesses can use the Custom Moderation option to adapt the model to their particular needs. They can upload and annotate images to train a custom moderation adapter. 

The enterprise-grade scalable model can be integrated hassle-free with a Cloud API, as well as with other AWS services. 

4. Sightengine

Sightengine is a platform solely focused on content moderation and image analysis. It boasts 110 moderation classes for filtering out inappropriate or harmful content, including nudity. Sightengine works with images, videos, and text. It also has AI-image and deepfake detection tools, as well as a feature for validating profile photos. 

Specifically for NSFW content, Sightengine has a Nudity Detection API that can classify content according to different levels of explicitness or suggestiveness. It can filter explicit and partial nudity based on an analysis of 30 different concepts, including pose, clothing, context, framing, and more. The filtering can be additionally improved by adding extra classes and contextual data. The model has eight pre-set severity levels, so that businesses can set the right limits on explicit content for their purposes. 

Sightengine is easy to integrate through its API and is fully privacy compliant, since there are no human moderators involved and images are not shared with any third parties. 

5. Clarifai

Clarifai offers a full-stack AI lifecycle platform, and one of its solutions is the content moderation platform. It employs deep learning AI models to provide moderation and filtering of images, videos, text, and audio. Among its features is the NSFW filtering, which can identify whether a visual contains NSFW or not. 

When it comes to adult content detection, Clarifai can classify content in three categories: either safe, suggestive, or explicit. It uses pre-trained models built with popular taxonomies like GARM. Clarifai allows for creating custom-trained models that are particularly tailored for the needs of a specific brand. Clarifai is easily deployable and scalable. 

Stay Compliant and Protect your Users

Adult content detection has become the norm for digital platforms in different business fields, helping companies stay compliant with legal regulations regarding explicit content, as well as protect users from being exposed to unwanted and inappropriate content. 

At Imagga, we build state-of-the-art technology in all of our image recognition tools –  and this is the case with our Adult Content Detection Model too. If you want to learn how it can help your business, get in touch or check out how to get started with the model in no time.