Toxicity detection is an essential pillar of modern content safety, helping platforms enforce community guidelines, comply with regulations, and ensure respectful interactions across user-generated content. TrustGate offers powerful plugin integrations with leading providers like Azure Content Safety and OpenAI Moderation API to analyze and filter harmful content in real time.

​
Why Detect Toxicity?

Toxic content can take many forms—hate speech, sexual content, self-harm encouragement, threats of violence, and more. Left unchecked, this type of content can:

  • Damage brand reputation and user trust
  • Violate regional and global regulations
  • Expose users to psychological harm
  • Undermine platform safety and inclusive experiences

Toxicity detection empowers organizations to take action before harmful content spreads, by flagging or blocking it according to configurable thresholds.

​
What TrustGate Offers

TrustGate supports two high-performance plugins for toxicity moderation:

PluginProviderContent TypesKey Features
Azure Toxicity DetectionAzure Content SafetyText & ImageSeverity level thresholds, multi-modal analysis, category-based filtering
OpenAI Toxicity DetectionOpenAI Moderation APIText & Image URLCategory-specific scoring, configurable thresholds, sub-category analysis

These plugins allow you to:

  • Analyze both text and images
  • Detect specific categories of risk (e.g., violence, hate, sexual content)
  • Customize response actions (block, warn, log)
  • Configure thresholds to balance sensitivity and false positive rates

​
Toxicity Categories

Typical categories analyzed include:

CategoryDescription
HateDiscriminatory or hateful language based on race, gender, religion, etc.
ViolenceThreats, graphic violence, promotion of harm to others
Self-HarmEncouragement or glorification of suicide, self-injury, etc.
SexualExplicit, suggestive, or otherwise inappropriate sexual content
HarassmentThreatening or targeted language aimed at individuals or groups
IllicitContent involving illegal activity or regulatory violations

Each plugin allows fine-tuned threshold controls, letting you define what gets blocked or flagged according to your audience and use case.

​
Example Use Cases

Toxicity detection is vital for:

  • LLM applications to prevent prompt abuse and jailbreaks
  • Messaging platforms for filtering hate speech and harassment
  • Education tech to keep learning environments safe
  • Public comment systems to block harmful or illegal content
  • Gaming communities for anti-toxicity and moderation automation
  • Customer support AI to intercept offensive or harmful messages

​
Response Format

Toxicity plugins typically return rich response data:

{
  "analysis_results": [
    { "category": "Hate", "severity": 1 },
    { "category": "Violence", "severity": 0 }
  ],
  "is_blocked": false,
  "blocked_categories": []
}

This allows your system to act in real time—blocking, alerting, or logging—based on the specific risk levels.

​
Best Practices

  • Use moderate default thresholds and adjust with data
  • Monitor blocked content and false positives for tuning
  • Secure API keys and rotate regularly
  • Enable category-level logging to understand trends
  • Test with realistic sample data to validate coverage

Explore individual plugin capabilities: