Unsplash

Unsplash uses a content filtering system built into its API that automatically screens search results to prevent images violating submission guidelines—such as nudity or violence—from being returned to API consumers. This is active by default for all API applications.

The Unsplash API includes a content_filter parameter that defaults to 'low', guaranteeing that images flagged as violating Unsplash's submission guidelines are excluded from API search results. A stricter 'high' setting can be applied by API developers to further remove content unsuitable for younger audiences. The API documentation notes it cannot guarantee removal of all potentially unsuitable content, indicating human review or imperfect automated detection. Unsplash's submission guidelines explicitly prohibit AI-generated images and content such as nudity.

Unsplash uses advanced image recognition technology to power keyword-based search across its library, with the Unsplash API officially described as being powered by 'tens of millions of community generated tags and advanced image recognition.' This is available to all users and API consumers globally.

Unsplash's search API documentation describes the search capability as powered by both community-generated keyword tags and advanced image recognition. This recognition layer supplements manual and auto-generated tags to improve the relevance of search results. The system accepts text keyword queries as input and returns ranked photo results. Unsplash also confirmed in a 2021 year-in-review post that it tweaked its search algorithm to prioritize more diverse results.

Unsplash deployed a machine learning-based visual matching system that scans the public web to identify where contributor photos have been used, then surfaces that information to photographers in a 'Uses' dashboard. This feature launched in May 2021.

Unsplash built its own visual matching technology powered by machine learning, combined with a custom web crawler, to identify public placements of Unsplash photos across the internet. The system takes Unsplash images as reference and matches them against indexed web pages, producing a list of notable public URLs where each photo appears. This information is displayed to photographers in their stats area under a section called 'Uses'.