Chinese scientists have reportedly created a “mind-reading” artificially intelligent helmet that sounds an alarm when the wearer looks at pornographic images.
Watching porn is banned in China and scientists think the device could be used by censors to speed up the policing of content.
Xu Jianjun, the director of the electrical engineering department at Beijing Jiaotong University, published the results of his findings in the Journal of Electronic Measurement and Instrumentation. He called the prototype a device “for bad information detection.”
The researchers claim to have tested the AI porn helmet on 15 male university students.
The device, which researchers claim is 80% accurate, is said to be able to filter out other signals that could trigger brainwaves when people emit emotions unrelated to exposure to porn.
The Chinese government maintains its crackdown on porn by deploying censors known as “porn appraisers” (jian huang shi) who comb social media in order to flag content that is deemed inappropriate.
Since porn is illegal in China, researchers had difficulty finding enough material to be used in order to train the device, according to the report. The explicit images that the researchers were able to obtain had to be redacted and censored in order to avoid running afoul of the law.
In 2018, it was reported that Chinese authorities offered its citizens rewards of $86,000 for snitching on their fellow citizens who were suspected of watching pornographic material, The New York Post reported.
