How an AI tool by a queer engineer is making the internet a safe place, one platform at a time

Ten months ago, Pranshu, a 16-year-old queer artist from Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain, died by suicide. The reason? A slew of hate comments on Pranshu’s Instagram account. Pranshu’s is not an isolated case. A National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB ) report last year revealed a 45 per cent rise in registered hate speech cases. Aindriya Barua, a queer artist and AI engineer, knew that this was a problem that needed a solution. So Barua came up with Shhor AI, an AI application programming interface that aims to weed out hate speech from social media.