Archive

BAIR cannot distinguish between pictures of faces and pornographic images

Bennett Haselton
7/19/2000

This report is a follow-up to our first report published on June 6, 2000. Our first report describes how you can set up the BAIR filter to test it for yourself, and lists relevant quotes and statements from the manufacturer, Exotrope, so we will not repeat that information here. Since we re-used the sample of "50 random pornographic images" and "50 random non-pornographic images" that we used the first time around, see our first report for the details of how we collected those images (we kept records of the image collection process to ensure that we would be using a fairly-chosen random sample).

When we re-tested the BAIR filter on July 18, 2000, we found that 34 out of 50 of the images from our first experiment were now blocked by BAIR. Of the non-pornographic images from our first experiment, only 8 of them were blocked. (Also, adding "?abc" or "?123" to the end of the image URL's did not seem to cause them to be blocked or unblocked any differently, so the BAIR filter had become less random. In our first experiment, adding "?abc" to the URL of some blocked images would cause them to be unblocked even though the content was identical.)

However, we also collected a random sample of pictures of people's faces, to see how many of those would be blocked by BAIR's image filter. The face pictures were chosen from the Love@AOL personals site, where we entered a search for all personals of "women seeking men", all ages (18-99), in Anchorage, Alaska, the first city in AOL's drop-down list. This produced a list of 52 pictures, so we used the first 50. (As we did in our first report, we make sure the images are selected in such a way that it would be impossible for us to "stack the deck" by only using images that support our results; the fairest way to do this was to use the method just described to select the "first 50" pictures on AOL's personals site.)

Out of the 50 face pictures, 34 were blocked by BAIR, the exact same number of pornographic pictures that were blocked out of 50. We conclude that BAIR has only neglible ability, if any, to distinguish between pornographic pictures and pictures of people's faces.

The following is the list of personal ad photos that we tested against the BAIR filter, after copying the photos to separate location and trying to load them through BAIR. (We hope the authors of these personal ads will not consider it a violation of their privacy to post these links here, since they chose to post their personal ads on the Web anyway; if the authors of any of the personal ads were to delete their ad from AOL, then the link below would cease to work.)

http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2058110
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2058110
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2046309
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2046309
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2037796
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2037796
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2034694
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=2034694
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1983919
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1983919
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1974903
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1974903
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1970568
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1970568
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1956207
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1956207
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1954074
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1954074
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1951006
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1951006
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1938612
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1938612
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1934825
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1934825
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1924199
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1924199
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1880167
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1880167
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1879743
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1879743
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1861486
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1861486
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1854262
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1854262
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1843033
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1843033
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1842951
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1842951
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1817939
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1817939
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1817174
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1817174
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1801361
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1801361
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1778017
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1778017
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1733403
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1733403
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1720494
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1720494
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1713278
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1713278
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1680264
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1680264
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1590644
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1590644
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1562701
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1562701
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1543913
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1543913
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1532477
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1532477
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1500821
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1500821
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1477987
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1477987
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1443262
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1443262
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1436464
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1436464
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1400096
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1400096
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1273399
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1273399
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1115296
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=1115296
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=881262
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=881262
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=879311
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=879311
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=877127
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=877127
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=846352
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=846352
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=749469
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=749469
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=738294
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=738294
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=733395
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=733395
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=588369
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=588369
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=479330
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=479330
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=341580
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=341580
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=283062
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=283062
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=246682
http://love.aol.com/ShowImage/showwebphoto.html?ui=246682