Badoo and Bumble are using facial recognition tech to protect you from unsolicited d**k pics

Unsolicited nude pictures are the 21st century version of flashing and anyone who has used a dating app will know that, unfortunately, they are rife.

It doesn’t have to be this way anymore. Badoo’s founder, Andrey Andreev, and Bumble’s founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, are launching a new feature, named Private Detector, to block these types of images in the dating world.

The Badoo group, which encompasses dating apps including Bumble, Chappy and Lumen, has been instrumental in leading the charge when it comes to safety features on apps. Features like facial recognition to verify someone’s identity, as well as live video chat to allow users to ‘meet’ safely before meeting in public, have long been a part of Badoo.

Safety is also paramount at Bumble. As a female-focused app, women make the first move and can mute their profiles when they need to take a break from being online.

The new Private Detector feature is something Andreev and Wolfe Herd have been working on for a while. In her role as CEO of Bumble, Wolfe Herd has been working with Texas state lawmakers (Bumble’s HQ is in Austin) on a bill to make the sharing of lewd photos a punishable offence.

“The digital world can be a very unsafe place overrun with lewd, hateful and inappropriate behaviour. There’s limited accountability, making it difficult to deter people from engaging in poor behaviour,” said Wolfe Herd.

That’s why the Private Detector feature is so revolutionary. Andrey and the team at Badoo used AI to create a feature which captures images in real time with 98 per cent accuracy. Once a lewd image is shared within a chat, the Detector feature automatically blurs the image and alerts the receiver that they have been sent an inappropriate image.

The person receiving the image can then decide whether or not to view the image or block it. They can easily report it to the moderation team too.

From June 2019, all users of Badoo, Bumble, Chappy and Lumen will have the feature seamlessly integrated into the app.

Andreev said in a statement: “The safety of our users is without question the number one priority in everything we do and the development of ‘Private Detector’ is another undeniable example of that commitment. The sharing of lewd images is a global issue of critical importance and it falls upon all of us in the social media and social networking worlds to lead by example and to refuse to tolerate inappropriate behaviour on our platforms.”

“I really admire the work Andrey has done for the safety and security of millions of people online and we, along with our teams, want to be a part of the solution. The ‘Private Detector’, and our support of this bill are just two of the many ways we’re demonstrating our commitment to making the internet safer,” added Wolfe Herd.

Social networks across the world are grappling with how to deal with inappropriate content online, whether it's lewd images in the dating space, self-harm images on Instagram, or terrorist content on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s notable when a platform takes a stand against a specific type of content and leverages tech to improve the experience for its users. Around 500 million people use the apps owned by the Badoo Group so a feature like this has the potential to make a real impact in the online dating scene.