Facebook Inc. has been developing image recognition and computer vision technology for years, and today the company said that it will begin using that technology to stop revenge porn from being shared on the social network.

Antigone Davis, head of global safety at Facebook, explained in a new blog post that Facebook has already been working to stop users from sharing illicit pictures of others without permission, but the company will be introducing a few new tools to make the process even better.

For example, users can report individual Facebook posts, which will then be sent to the social network’s Community Operations team. The team then reviews the post and remove it if it violates the site’s policies. Davis said Facebook usually disables the offending user accounts as well, but the site also has an appeals process for users who believe they were banned in error.

Another problem Facebook deals with are users who knowingly or unknowingly reshare pictures that have already been removed, but that is where Facebook’s image recognition technology will come into play. According to Davis, Facebook will now automatically detect previously removed pictures to prevent them from being shared again by anyone on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram. These users will be immediately alerted that the picture they are trying to share violates Facebook’s policies.

“These tools, developed in partnership with safety experts, are one example of the potential technology has to help keep people safe,” Davis said.

Davis noted that the new tools are part of Facebook’s community-focused initiative outlined by Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) in his public letter on the future of the company. Zuckerberg said in his letter that Facebook has succeeded in making the world more connected, and now the company wants to work on building a better global community. This includes making Facebook safer for users, and Zuckerberg said that better technology, including AI, is one of the cornerstones of this process.

“We are researching systems that can look at photos and videos to flag content our team should review,” Zuckerberg said in his letter. “This is still very early in development, but we have started to have it look at some content, and it already generates about one-third of all reports to the team that reviews content for our community.”

Zuckerberg said it will take “many years” to fully implement this technology, but today’s anti-revenge porn features show that the company is serious in working towards these goals.

Photo: Facebook