Artificial intelligence to stop dangerous and illegal personal protective equipment sold online in the EU
Personal protective equipment is sought after by consumers online. To shield consumers against the sale of dangerous and illegal goods, the EU Commission is now utilizing artificial intelligence.
Cloth face masks, face shields and surgical masks are selling like hotcakes right now - including online. The battle against COVID-19 is far from over and this calls for a high level of personal protection. But if protective devices are not legal and safe, they give a false sense of security. Therefore, the EU Commission has specifically chosen to focus on this area.
Online shopping is now so widespread that it would take tremendous human resources to look at all the items for sale online. Instead, the capacity required for screening, image recognition, and reporting hits to the authorities can be satisfied by artificial intelligence.
The Danish developed solution from KMD supports safe online shopping for 450 million EU citizens
The EU will take the fight against the sale of dangerous products over the internet to the next level in 2021. The Danish developed system from KMD was recently chosen by the EU Commission to assist market surveillance authorities in all EU countries with one common tool: SAFE. Thus, supporting safe online shopping for 450 million EU citizens.
“Image recognition is a field where artificial intelligence has taken quantum leaps in recent years. We now see what tremendous value it can create when we protect consumers against dangerous products. The algorithm is constantly improving the ability to carefully scan the online market for problematic items, and with the results available with the Danish version, online shoppers throughout the EU now face a safer future,” says Merete Søby, Executive Vice President of Data Driven Solutions with senior responsibility for the commercial market at KMD.
Image recognition is a field where artificial intelligence has taken quantum leaps in recent years. We now see what tremendous value it can create when we protect consumers against dangerous products. The algorithm is constantly improving the ability to carefully scan the online market for problematic items, and with the results available with the Danish version, online shoppers throughout the EU now face a safer future.
The EU maintains a common image database for hazardous products, which SAFE will utilize. If an item is marked as dangerous in, for example, Germany, then the system will respond with a hit when SAFE recognizes the image on a Danish website. Hits prompt the system to notify the authorities so that they can take steps to stop the sale of the specific product by blocking the website and sanction the company selling the product.
“SAFE (known as AIME in Denmark) can be a difficult nut for the black market to crack. If a shop sells illegal protective devices on the Internet, SAFE can trace it; and if it can be found the program will analyze it. This means that SAFE can bypass website security and analyze necessary data. We hope that this will allow SAFE to help put a stop to the black market,” says Adrien Szeń, Azure & .NET Developer at KMD Poland.
The Danish Safety Technology Authority has had AIME available since fall 2020
Image recognition with artificial intelligence is one of the tools that the Danish Safety Technology Authority has had available since fall 2020. The software solution behind the EU tool SAFE is called AIME and was developed by KMD for the purpose of identifying illegal and dangerous products for sale online.
“Before we developed AIME, people had to manually analyze hundreds of websites for potentially illegal products. The consequence of all the manual work was that some data was overlooked or even forgotten. Now AIME can analyze these websites for us even faster and much more effectively. AIME makes it possible to trace specific websites selling products that are most likely illegal,” explains Adrien Szeń.
In practice, the Danish Safety Technology Authority initiates a search for a specific piece of protective equipment based on, for example, an image, or they screen the market using generic terms such as “face mask.” AIME finds all the web shops where “face mask” is mentioned, after which Danish Safety Technology Authority case workers select relevant products to take a closer look at. During busy times where this type of work is extremely important to health and safety, the system has been a tremendous help to the Danish Safety Technology Authority,
“We are doing more and more shopping online and with COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown this trend has really grown. Being able to buy things from around the world with just a few clicks is practical, but it can be hard for the consumer to recognize whether the item they are buying is legal and safe. This creates the need for a protective tool to help identify dangerous goods and prevent them being sold. Here, artificial intelligence can improve consumer safety,” explains Lone Saaby, Director of the Danish Safety Technology Authority.
We are doing more and more shopping online and with COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown this trend has really grown. Being able to buy things from around the world with just a few clicks is practical, but it can be hard for the consumer to recognize whether the item they are buying is legal and safe. This creates the need for a protective tool to help identify dangerous goods and prevent them being sold. Here, artificial intelligence can improve consumer safety.
In relation to personal protective equipment, the Danish Safety Technology Authority has already used AIME to identify specific illegal and dangerous products 74 times. This way, AIME has performed work that would otherwise have had to be done manually.