China revs up censorship as 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square approaches

Chinese AI-based online censors will block out any content related to the "sensitive issue"

It's the most sensitive day of the year for China's internet, the anniversary of the bloody June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square, and with under two weeks to go, China's robot censors are working overtime.

Censors at Chinese internet companies say tools to detect and block content related to the 1989 crackdown have reached unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition.

"We sometimes say that the artificial intelligence is a scalpel, and a human is a machete," said one content screening employee at Beijing Bytedance Co Ltd, who asked not to be identified