BBFC taps into AWS AI portfolio to speed up content classification

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies could be deployed to aid its content classification work.

The alpha phase of the exploratory project is already underway, with the BBFC drawing on its own datasets and the viewing experiences of its staff to train the AI so that content can be classified for compliance purposes.

The BBFC’s classification guidelines are informed by the feedback of more than 10,000 people across the UK to ensure they align with current UK societal standards. They are subject to review and updates every four to five years.

“The BBFC is developing a prototype for a bespoke AI tool that will identify and tag content issues,” the organisation said in a statement. “AWS has provided machine learning and natural language processing technologies to develop this multimodal tool.”

The project is being partially funded by innovation agency Innovate UK, and supported by members of the AWS Machine Learning Solutions Lab and its professional services team, as well as the University of Bath’s Department of Computer Science.

The latter organisation’s involvement in the project is geared towards protecting against algorithmic bias occurring when using the tool.

According to the BBFC, the tool is already capable of identifying content issues with 80% accuracy, prompting the organisation to talk up the technology’s potential to bring large-scale efficiencies to its compliance teams.

Furthermore, the BBFC is also building a separate tool to determine and assign international age ratings for use alongside the tagging tool. It is hoped this will accelerate the time it takes for distributors and streaming services to age rate content in multiple territories.

BBFC president Natasha Kaplinksy said the project was an acknowledgement of the role AI is likely to play in classifying content in the years to come.

“This announcement marks an incredibly exciting transition for the BBFC, as we continue to embrace new technology to help us achieve our core mission of supporting people and families across the UK to make informed viewing decisions about the content they consume,” she said.

“We are exploring ways in which AI might support and enhance the BBFC’s classification work”