Image Matters: Scalable Detection of Offensive and Non-Compliant Content / Logo in Product Images

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable computer vision system for detecting offensive and non-compliant images in large e-commerce product catalogs, addressing challenges like data scarcity and class imbalance.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, practical approach combining deep learning and crowdsourcing to effectively identify problematic images in massive, diverse retail datasets.

Findings

Effective detection of offensive images in large datasets

Overcoming data scarcity and class imbalance challenges

Integration of deep learning with crowdsourcing techniques

Abstract

In e-commerce, product content, especially product images have a significant influence on a customer's journey from product discovery to evaluation and finally, purchase decision. Since many e-commerce retailers sell items from other third-party marketplace sellers besides their own, the content published by both internal and external content creators needs to be monitored and enriched, wherever possible. Despite guidelines and warnings, product listings that contain offensive and non-compliant images continue to enter catalogs. Offensive and non-compliant content can include a wide range of objects, logos, and banners conveying violent, sexually explicit, racist, or promotional messages. Such images can severely damage the customer experience, lead to legal issues, and erode the company brand. In this paper, we present a computer vision driven offensive and non-compliant image detection system for extremely large image datasets. This paper delves into the unique challenges of applying deep learning to real-world product image data from retail world. We demonstrate how we resolve a number of technical challenges such as lack of training data, severe class imbalance, fine-grained class definitions etc. using a number of practical yet unique technical strategies. Our system combines state-of-the-art image classification and object detection techniques with budgeted crowdsourcing to develop a solution customized for a massive, diverse, and constantly evolving product catalog.