Amazon Rekognition Enforces Decency

Amazon Rekognition, a service developed by Amazon's Computer Vision team and powered by a deep learning engine, can scan large numbers of images and identify their content -- everything from estimating the age of people in photographs, to declaring what they're wearing, what kind of locations they're at, and even their emotional sentiments.

But with so many racy images out there, Amazon decided Rekognition needed a more parental touch.

A new feature, Amazon Rekognition Image Moderation, can evaluate content for appropriateness, flagging images across several levels of decency infractions.

The example Vogels showed at Summit was a slightly racy photo of a handsome man standing in the ocean in nothing but his swim trunks. Nothing too explicit, but Rekognition noted the image could be found suggestive.