Google will upgrade its revenge porn defenses with help from a UK nonprofit

Google is partnering with a UK nonprofit to fight non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII). (You may know it better as revenge porn.) Over the coming months, the company will begin using StopNCII’s hashes. These user-uploaded digital fingerprints can block individuals’ unwanted intimate content from appearing in search results.

StopNCII has a pretty neat system to combat revenge porn. Say you have some images you most definitely don’t want surfacing online. Select the picture on your device, and StopNCII will create a digital fingerprint of the file. That hash will be uploaded to the service. The photo itself never leaves your device. The organization then shares the hash (again, not the spicy pic) with participating platforms.

Then, if an asshole ex takes the liberty of uploading said photo to one of those companies’ services, it should be removed automatically. If the platform uses real-time hash matching, it can even block the upload immediately before it reaches anyone’s eyes. It’s a pretty solid defense against a very ugly problem.

The system isn’t bulletproof. First, it only works for known images. So, if someone else has an intimate photo that you don’t have a copy of, you’ll have to fight that using other means. StopNCII doesn’t work for AI-generated images, audio recordings or saucy text chats.

The system also won’t help if the content is uploaded to a non-partner platform. In addition to Google, StopNCII partners with Meta, Reddit, Pornhub, OnlyFans, Snap, Microsoft Bing, X and more.

This is far from Google’s first move to combat NCII. A decade ago, it created a system for submitting revenge porn takedown requests. In 2024, it made it easier to remove deepfake NCII. On Wednesday, Google product manager Griffin Hunt explained that “given the scale of the open web, there’s more to be done to reduce the burden on those who are affected by it.”

If you’re 18 or older and have any photos of yourself that you want to flag proactively, you can start using StopNCII right now. Head to the org’s website to create a case. Note that the service only works for pictures that are nude, semi-nude or show a sexual act. And remember, the photo itself never leaves your device, so your privacy remains intact.