00:00Data scientist Marcel Schliebs developed the AI-supported software that SODAN is based on.
00:06It scans through comments on social media, flagging any potentially criminal content.
00:14The AI is already very good at identifying many examples.
00:19The software scans publicly accessible comments for its clients.
00:23It searches for groups of words that constitute known criminal offences,
00:27like insults or incitement to hatred and violence.
00:30Thanks to judicial databases, it is constantly learning.
00:34But one problem remains, and it's not a technical one.
00:42In all honesty, there is not yet much legal precedent in this area.
00:48When it comes to punishable online insults, threats and hate crime,
00:52we are actually leading the way in creating this precedent.
00:58The AI software uses semantic vectors.
01:01That means that similar terms are grouped together.
01:06This way, it also discovers new potentially punishable words.
01:10They are then catalogued for inspection.
01:17Sexist insults like k*** or slut are filed in one space.
01:21Next, words like whore or skank.
01:24They have completely different letters but are semantically very similar.
01:28Of course, that's not enough to say it's also a criminal offence to use this word.
01:32But it is helpful for pre-sorting, to then go over it again and take a closer look.
01:40The final legal check is still performed by human beings, though.
01:44Sometimes, the internet feels lawless.
01:47Franziska Brandmann and her team are working to change just that.
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