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Google AI

Google Will Soon Blur Explicit Images By Default in Search Results (theverge.com) 67

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Google is introducing a new online safety feature to help users avoid inadvertently seeing graphically violent or pornographic images while using its search engine. From a report: Announced as part of the company's Safer Internet Day event on Tuesday, the new default setting enabled for everyone will automatically blur explicit images that appear in search results, even for users that don't have SafeSearch enabled. Google has confirmed to The Verge that, should they wish, signed-in users over 18 will be able to disable the blur setting entirely after it launches in "the coming months."
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Google Will Soon Blur Explicit Images By Default in Search Results More

Google Will Soon Blur Explicit Images By Default in Search Results

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  • Bing! (Score:4)

    by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @10:28AM (#63272319)
    Bing is already the superior porn search engine anyway, although of course they may follow Google's lead.

    Yandex is good too, but who knows what those Russians are doing with my search history.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      MS-Wank (MS-Power-Point taken already)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I think Bing censors more than google. It is just that it may be easier to turn it off in bing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )
        I just did a search on Bing (first time in the past year probably) and had no issues switching to images and turning off safe filter (upper right). It was pretty easy. But it did sensor more than Google. Searching for "wanking" on Bing was not all porn. On Google it was ALL porn (and I was sorry I did it the moment it returned the results and wished I would have chosen a better search term).

    • Bing is already the superior porn search engine anyway

      Google's marketing team is missing a golden opportunity here to weaponize this to the detriment of its competitors.

      "Google for finding the nearest Golden Arches with Google Maps-integrated Search, Bing for finding the latest Golden Shower movies."

    • It's not superior for porn, it's actually worse IMO. Google will show you the same stuff but you have to word your searches more carefully, because their search is refined enough to filter out unintended pornographic results (like somebody searching for "bikini" might not be interested in seeing explicit content, they might just be searching for bikinis to buy or the Atoll it's named after.) Bing on the other hand just vomits out whatever pictures with keywords match.

      As long as it's a setting I can turn off

  • So... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @10:35AM (#63272343) Homepage

    So... no more searching in private mode then?

    Google has no clue about this Internet thing.

  • We are art lovers here, we don't want our Delacroix, Goya, Modigliani etc searches censored.
    If I have to sign in to do a proper search, I'll avoid Google search (I've already started using more DuckDuckGo and - gasp - Bing lately anyway).

  • Google sucks and has sucked for a while trying to find that kinda thing anyways.

  • Finally Google can satisfy my fetish (Score:5, Funny)

    by poptopdrop ( 6713596 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @10:37AM (#63272351)

    I only get off on blurred images of naked peoples.

    Aaaaaah.

    • Wait.
      I hope this isn't another Google project I'm going to make a lot of use of, and then they're going to cancel it after 5 minutes ?

    • Oh yes, another Japanese porn aficionado! I can't get off unless my girlfriend's private parts are pixelated.

      • Pixelated ? Eeuw, you sicko.

        Gaussian is what we nice people do.

      • Re:Finally Google can satisfy my fetish (Score:5, Funny)

        by Will_Malverson ( 105796 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @11:13AM (#63272443) Journal

        The real advantage of Japanese porn is that with the naughty bits blurred out, you can safely watch it around children, on public transportation, at the airport, or elsewhere that porn consumption might normally be frowned upon.

        • The Japanese blur out the naughty bits because the old men running the country think that if the average Japanese man could see unblurred naughty bits they'd give up on real women and there'd be no more children. This policy clearly works as evidence by their high birth rate.

          Those same dirty old men make schoolgirls wear short skirts in winter by mandating them as part of the uniform. These are the men running the country. Kind shows you how useless the upper caste is.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by PPH ( 736903 )

            This is a result of the British missionaries arriving and complaining about what was a more enlightened culture with respect to erotica. Take a look at some of the old Japanese wood-cut prints. The missionaries complained about art depicting "insertions". So now you get pictures where the act is pretty obvious. But there's a tiny black bar blocking only the location of the insertion.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Indeed. And it seems school-girl underwear inspection by teachers in Japan is actually a real thing. I thought for a long time that this was just a somewhat bizarre fetish fantasy. The blurring in Jav porn really makes no sense except as a figurative fig-leaf.

    • In most cases your imagination is far better than high definition reality.

      Sometimes you can't unsee some things, sometimes its all nice and rosy then you come across that one image this is like wtf and you can't unsee it.

      What they need is a slider to adjust the amount of explicitness needed to blur the image. Sider goes from 'softporn' -> 'that's even possible?'.

      • There's more, so Slider goes from 'softporn' -> 'that's even possible?' -> 'Hollywood Actor' -> 'Trump in Russia'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

      That's a whole new meaning to pixel-peeping.

  • How does the search engine know it's "explicit"? There are a lot of pictures of phallic-looking objects that aren't explicit...
  • It seems like the appropriate default behavior. If you are trying to do normal searches in public places (or using public terminals), having any explicit images that you inadvertently encounter be blurred seems pretty desirable. If you are actually searching for porn (why in the world are you using Google anyway), you can turn off the feature. Most Google searches are not for adult content and having explicit images come back would be a pretty negative experience. I am astonished that this isn't already

    • you can turn off the feature.

      Only if you're signed into google

      • Which you would normally not do from a public terminal like in a library. Although most of those terminals are configured for public access and will reset to defaults between users. Others have pointed out that this might be related to not showing explicit content to minors. That also seems reasonable and having you login is a good way to know that you aren't a minor. If you want to see an unblurred version of an image you can also follow the link. This really seems like much ado about very little.

    • Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Luke has no name ( 1423139 ) <(moc.erifxofrebyc) (ta) (xof)> on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @10:59AM (#63272397)

      You are incorrect.

      What you are describing is already a feature of every major search engine: SafeSearch. They currently do, and are entirely capable of, enabling a no-explicit-photos policy by default, with an opt-in for explicit results. It's existed for years. Many school and corporate web proxies can force this setting on via a checkbox, and Google itself could force the setting to be reverted to "on" after every search in a session, if they wished.

      What they are doing now, is requiring someone to login with an account, tell Google you're 18 (I hope kids never figure out how to do that) and then running the search.

      This is data-mining, for-the-children-placating garbage.

      • Google collecting a kink profile on someone, what could the harm be in that?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Google collecting a kink profile on someone, what could the harm be in that?

          Maybe Google wants to become more active in politics in the future. Collecting compromising info on people is sort-of a requirement for that these days.

    • It seems like the appropriate default behavior.

      No, the "appropriate default behavior" is to immediately call the police, have a SWAT team barge in and arrest you for violating the religious Morales of others. /s

      If you are trying to do normal searches in public places (or using public terminals), having any explicit images that you inadvertently encounter be blurred seems pretty desirable.

      Google, and every other search engine out there, already has an opt-in feature for explicit images. Forcing someone to login to be able to view uncensored material is requiring tracking of people's perceived offenses to the big and powerful. I.e. It's to create a list of people for future punishment. No sub-age-of-majority asshole is going to c

      • By your logic, if I want to use a public internet terminal, I have to login in order to avoid seeing unintended explicit content? That would reverse what is normally the current situation. There seems to be a lot of conspiracy theory in this thread. If somebody wanted to go through my (family friendly) Google search history, they could already find a reason to fire (or not hire) me. Heck my slashdot posting history is probably more incriminating than my Google history. And that would be true even if you

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by capn_ed ( 265285 )

          No, you've got it all backwards. The current situation is that SafeSearch exists and is on by default for any user who is not logged in; the children are safe from seeing boobs accidentally. Anybody searching on a machine that is not sufficiently locked down by the network admin can turn SafeSearch off and find whatever Google might have, without having to associate their Google login with their private searches. Anyone who doesn't want to see anything explicit can just leave SafeSearch turned on. There is

          • who don't know why that's a bad idea will just lie about their ages to get around the block and create a Google account that has way too much information about the explicit things they were curious about

            Thought of this earlier, but in that regard a better question to ask Google, and a few congress critters, would be:

            "Why is Google collecting information on the sexual kinks and preferences of young children and demanding that information be deanonymized by default?" "If we assume they are upholding their duty to their shareholders, who is trying to buy that information off of Google and how much is Google profiting off of the sexual kinks and preferences of young children?"

            Let Google spin that one. I'l

        • By your logic, if I want to use a public internet terminal, I have to login in order to avoid seeing unintended explicit content?

          Or you could just leave SafeSearch on. Which is the default, is how the explicit images are filtered to begin with, and doesn't require login to use. Key tidbit there: Any image that isn't already flagged by SafeSearch, probably won't get blurred by the new system either. (Easiest way to check which images to blur is to use the SafeSearch metadata.) If that's the case, this new system doesn't offer any more protection to a logged out user than the current SafeSearch checkbox. Making it entirely pointless f

    • Not really. The appropriate behavior is to return the most accurate results for what the user is searching for, regardless of whatever the search term may our may not be. I'm quite capable of deciding for myself what is appropriate for my own eyes. I'm equally capable of not searching for or watching porn in public. (By the way, blocking just searches won't stop the sort of people who *would* watch porn in public from doing so. They can just go straight to pornhub or wherever.). And in general, I don't

      • The issue isn't when you are searching for porn. The issue is when you are *not* searching for porn and don't expect anything explicit but the search algorithm returns something inappropriate. It was only a few years ago that people tended to name open-source projects after adult-entertainment terms. Or you decide to search for "SQL Injection" and somehow the algorithm comes back with "Did you mean anal ejaculation" or whatever. Who cares if there are explicit images in explicit searches? That's kind o

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

          Who cares if there are explicit images in explicit searches? That's kind of the point. If the search algorithm were perfect, this would be silly, but since it isn't, blurring explicit images seems like a good choice.

          But you're missing the point. It's not whether you can search for explicit images, or whether explicit images are blurred by default.

          It's that under Google's new policy, you can ONLY view explicit images by giving Google permission to track your search history.

          Even if they don't do anything with the data (which is unlikely), it's stonking massive invasion of privacy, and as soon as users realize that they can't search for potentially explicit images anonymously, I predict a mass exodus from Google's search

      • exactly this. google and search engines in general should be as absolutely transparent as possible.

    • no. it's bullshit.
      google is like a pesky little insect following you around the internet keeping notes on everything you see and search for. using private mode at least gave you the illusion of the being able to separate your 'above board' (for lack of a better term) activity with things you'd rather keep to yourself.
      entrusting so much of our online activity to a FUCKING ADVERTISING company is absolutely retarded. these little piggies have their fingers in just about everything.

      now if they had an exceptio

  • ... signed-in users over 18 will be able to disable the blur setting...

  • I remember (Score:3)

    by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @11:23AM (#63272485)

    I remember when Google was actually a cool company. Now they're just a turd in the punch bowl.

  • For protecting me from the vicious genitalia out to attack me on the internet.

  • I own at least 3 separate Google accounts:
    - One exclusively for my phone.
    - One exclusively for google searches on my desktop.
    - One+ for other purposes.

    The Google serach account is only used on a separate instance of an sandbox browser so that my sometimes-dodgy searches don't propagate to my other accounts. If this change goes ahead, it will mean that my account separation will be turned useless overnight.

  • I'm sure they won't stop at "explicit", which in itself is sper ambiguous. What's next on the censorship to-do list? Dating sites? Cybersecurity training? Access to medical advice? There are plenty of potentially adult-only topics which are only adult-only by law but wich should be available to anyone.

  • Why else would I be on the Internet... I'm here to see graphic violence and porn. Google seems to have forgotten about how we human....

  • even if I have safe search disabled?!

    I see google is going down the slippery slope of ignoring my decisions and is censoring me for my own good. Thanks for nothing!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      Given that they've been ignoring your specific search criteria for about a decade now, it's just more of the same.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Actually, since I have stopped using Google a couple of years ago, they have stopped ignoring my search criteria. Kind of a hidden functionality, really.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ufgrat ( 6245202 )

      Nah, they're not censoring you.

      They're just recording your every search. Which to be fair, they probably are already in Incognito mode, now they're just being blatant about it.

  • Can't wait for the new Reddit sub r/unnecessarylyblured
  • Bing is still better for your porn searching

  • And then profile their porn-habits? Methinks Google is not acting smart here. Incidentally, with DuckDuckGo you can just switch off save search and no login required.

    • Oh, they monitor your porn habits and it doesnt matter if youre signed in or not. Dont fool yourself about that. If you dont like the idea, buy the old timey magazines. With cash only.

      They’re just VERY careful about monetizing that specific info. If my interest in legos gets sold by google/facebook and lego ads start popping up elsewhere, I dont care much. If a single ad for my (insert fetish here) mysteriously shows up in my work browser, you can rest assured that I will NEVER trust that company
  • To begin with, all images of Big Foot are blurry because laws of physics such that any camera whether old or new will automatically go out of focus or zoom way out when capturing image. Because BF doesn't wear clothes, then search images will be more blurry.

  • Google has confirmed to The Verge that, should they wish, signed-in users over 18 will be able to disable the blur setting entirely after it launches in "the coming months."

    Yet another attempt to make people sign into Google to use it.

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