Full-Scale Operation of AI-Based Illegal Financial Advertisement Monitoring System Begins

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) announced on the 4th that it will fully operate an AI-based illegal financial advertisement monitoring system to swiftly and accurately block online illegal financial advertisements.

A flyer related to private loans is placed at a closed store in Myeongdong, Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Jinhyung Kang aymsdream@

Recently, while illegal private loans have been rampant, new types of illegal financial cases using the internet and social networking services (SNS) are spreading. According to the FSS, the number of requests to block online posts that lure citizens into illegal private loans from January to September reached 13,304, a 15.9% increase compared to the previous year.

In particular, the FSS explained that there have been cases of sexual exploitation debt collection, where victims are asked to provide or have their nude photos and videos collected, and if they fall behind on payments, they are threatened with distribution to acquaintances or the public.

In response, the FSS plans to enhance the effectiveness of blocking illegal financial advertisements by building an AI model that analyzes posts and images of online illegal financial advertisements and autonomously determines their illegality. To this end, the FSS expanded the scope of illegality judgment by using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to convert illegal content or phone numbers expressed in image form within illegal financial advertisements into text.

Additionally, since January 2020, the FSS has trained an AI natural language processing model (BERT) with the results of reviewing 65,000 online illegal financial advertisement posts to improve the detection function for illegal advertisements.

The FSS also launched a linkage system with the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC). Through this, the entire process related to requests for blocking illegal financial advertisements and notifications of review results has been automated.

The FSS stated, "We will continuously enhance the functions of the illegal financial advertisement monitoring system and conduct frequent inspections of illegal financial advertisements to ensure that ordinary citizens are not exposed to the temptation of illegal private loans. Since consumer reports and swift blocking are crucial to preventing damage, we urge citizens to actively report illegal financial advertisements if they find any."