Instagram's new safety feature will blur nude images in DMs

instagram nude dms

Meta — the parent company of Instagram — has announced a slew of safety measures for users. In a blog post, Meta said that the new features and tools will help protecting people from sextortion and other forms of intimate image abuse. The tools, as per Meta, will make it as hard as possible for scammers to find potential targets

Sextortion scammers may use private messages to share or ask for intimate images. To help address this, Meta is introducing a new nudity protection feature in Instagram DMs. This will blurs images detected as containing nudity and encourages people to think twice before sending nude images. “This feature is designed not only to protect people from seeing unwanted nudity in their DMs, but also to protect them from scammers who may send nude images to trick people into sending their own images in return,” said Meta.

For teens or anyone under 18, nudity protection will be turned on by default. Furthermore, Instagram will show a notification to adults encouraging them to turn it on.

According to Meta, when nudity protection is turned on, people sending images containing nudity will see a message reminding them to be cautious when sending sensitive photos, and that they can unsend these photos if they’ve changed their mind.

How will the feature work?

When someone receives an image containing nudity, it will be automatically blurred under a warning screen, meaning the recipient isn’t confronted with a nude image and they can choose whether or not to view it, said Meta. “We’ll also show them a message encouraging them not to feel pressure to respond, with an option to block the sender and report the chat,” explained the social media giant.

Also, when sending or receiving these images, people will be directed to safety tips, including reminders that people may screenshot or forward images without their knowledge.

The feature uses on-device machine learning to analyse whether an image sent in a DM on Instagram contains nudity. “Because the images are analysed on the device itself, nudity protection will work in end-to-end encrypted chats, where Meta won’t have access to these images – unless someone chooses to report them to us,” said Meta in the blog post.