AI Content Moderation — Balancing Automation With Human Judgment

When it comes to moderating content, whether on a forum, online publication, or in a digital classroom, it’s tempting to leave everything to AI and let the machine handle it. 

However, AI is far from flawless, and depending on its training data, it can cause several issues. For instance, it can block users based on training data biases, impacting user interactions and collaboration. 

How can you make sure that AI content moderation does the heavy lifting and prevent potential mishaps? 

The secret is finding the right balance to combine:

• Fairness
• Accuracy
• Accountability

Go beyond surface-level AI moderation and seek opportunities for AI automation and human judgment to work together. 

Compare where automated content moderation shines and where humans need to step in. 

Plagiarism and AI Detection in Content Moderation

Plagiarism detection and AI detection are particularly important in online classrooms and courses. 

It’s a must to ensure that authors get credit where credit is due, and it’s also a way to support students by teaching proper citation, independent thought, and transparency.

Additionally, plagiarism and AI detection are beneficial for web publishers and marketing agencies who want to moderate their content and verify that it’s unique and original.

Using automated plagiarism checkers

Plagiarism checkers are powerful tools to have on hand when moderating content, as they can quickly scan and flag potential instances of plagiarism.

These modern tools far surpass traditional plagiarism-checking software. Depending on the software, it may have the capability to compare writing patterns and context or scan databases. So, using a plagiarism checker is a fantastic moderation assistant.

The Originality.ai plagiarism detector is a superb choice for marketers and web publishers because it compares texts to Google’s search results for potential instances of plagiarism.

With Originality.ai, you can also opt to combine AI detection and plagiarism checking when you run a Content Scan, streamlining your overall moderation process.

Incorporating AI detectors

AI checkers are another excellent way to incorporate AI content moderation into your workflow. AI checkers differ from plagiarism detectors in that they are specifically designed to uncover AI-generated text like GPT-4o-mini or Claude. 

For instance, the Originality.ai Site Scanner is an asset for publishers, agencies, and writers because it enables a rapid scan of an entire website to highlight AI-generated content.

Conducting a human review

Once the plagiarism checker or AI detector has flagged potential plagiarism or AI content, this is ideally where human moderators step in to measure the accuracy of the AI moderation tool. 

It’s best practice to accompany automated moderation with human review. This reduces the risk of false positives or incorrectly accusing someone of plagiarism, such as if there were quotations and citations present. Learn more about AI detector accuracy and false positives.

Creating a hybrid feedback loop

When it comes to automated content moderation, using human feedback to train the AI should help it improve over time so that human content moderators are only needed in more complex cases. 

As AI content moderation is always learning and its algorithms are continually training on new and more relevant information, it continues to analyze its mistakes and learn from them, opening up possibilities for advanced AI moderation in the future.

Fact-Checking to Moderate Content

As with AI content moderation, AI-based fact-checking should be a first step.

AI is excellent for verifying dates, statistics, and other types of facts. In cases of automated content moderation, it’s a good idea to have artificial intelligence crunch the data to see if this or that fact is actually verifiable. 

Originality.ai offers an automated fact-checker that runs an internally built AI to help copy editors and web publishers streamline their fact-checking process.

However, just like when using AI to moderate comments or check for plagiarism, it’s a smart idea to have a ‘human in the loop.’ AI fact-checkers can do a first pass on the content, and then humans can delve into the more nuanced claims or complex cases. 

Misinformation is becoming more complex, and fact-checking is increasingly important. By working together, both humans and AI can flag incorrect facts to uncover and correct them. 

Seeking Balance in AI Content Moderation

When moderating content, it’s important to find a reliable balance between AI handling the heavy workload and human moderators involved as a second check. 

Just as AI continues to learn what type of content is appropriate and what isn’t, human moderators can also benefit from training around misinformation and disinformation, sensitivities, and applying decisions in a way that’s fair and understandable. 

Understanding and recognizing AI bias

Human judgment is vital to recognizing and taking steps to deal with bias. Remember, AI is only as good as the material it’s trained on, and bias can be hard to uncover. 

Taking steps to correct those biases goes a long way toward training AI to handle more content moderation duties. 

Human insight is important for handling emotions, appeals, and disputes

Content moderation isn’t always as straightforward as checking a box that says, ‘This is plagiarism,’ or ‘This is biased.’

Sometimes, it involves complex and sensitive issues. This is where a human moderator is required who has the ability to understand the (oftentimes deeply) emotional impact of content and take steps to remedy it. 

AI lacks the empathy needed to hear both sides of a particular scenario with fairness and an open mind. On the other hand, humans can engage in ongoing dialogue with the affected users, consider the full context, and offer explanations.

Make guidelines clear and transparent

Many issues revolving around humans and AI in content moderation can be sidestepped by having clear roles and transparent guidance on how decisions are made. Making users feel included in the process cultivates good community habits and encourages members to recognize and abide by the rules.

The Bottom Line on AI Content Moderation

When it comes to AI content moderation, there are some things best left to AI and others that require a more human touch. 

When training and using AI for content moderation, let it handle the task of flagging posts for plagiarism, AI content, or inaccurate facts. 

Then, involve human moderators in more complex cases, who can perform in-depth fact-checks, review instances of plagiarism, and add a human perspective to emotional decisions. 

By continuing to train and oversee the development of AI in content moderation and balancing it with human insight, you can cultivate the kind of place that people appreciate being a part of and enjoy participating in.