New AI methods to tackle the illegal wildlife trade on the internet

Scientists applied machine vision models and were able to deduce from the context of an image if it pertained to the sale of a live animal. These methods make it possible to flag the posts which may be selling animals illegally. Illegal wildlife trade is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar industry where hundreds of species are traded globally. A considerable proportion of the illegal wildlife trade now uses online marketplaces to advertise and sell live animals or animal products as it can reach more buyers than previously possible. With the trade happening across the internet it is extremely challenging to manually search through thousands of posts and methods for automated filtering are needed.