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AI Guardrails:Image Moderation 2.0: Overview and billing

Last Updated:Jun 29, 2026

Image Moderation 2.0 detects risky image content across multiple scenarios and supports pay-as-you-go and resource plan billing.

1. Introduction to Image Moderation 2.0

Features

The Image Moderation 2.0 API detects image content that violates online regulations, disrupts platform governance, or degrades user experience. It supports 40+ content risk tags and 40+ risk control items. Based on the risk tags and confidence scores returned by the API, you can define custom review or governance actions tailored to your industry standards or platform content policies.

Version comparison

Compared with Image Moderation 1.0, Image Moderation 2.0 offers broader risk coverage, more granular risk labels, and more flexible console configuration options.

Comparison item

Image Moderation2.0

Image Moderation 1.0

Default QPS

Non-large-model version: 100

Large-model version: 50

50

Risk detection scope

  • Image Moderation for Large and Small Model Integration: Combines large-model and expert-model capabilities to detect pornography, sexy content, politically sensitive content, terrorist content, prohibited content, religious content, advertising traffic diversion, and inappropriate content.

  • Image Moderation for Large and Small Model Integration_For entering the Chinese mainland: Designed for entering-the-Chinese-mainland scenarios. Combines large-model and expert-model capabilities to detect pornography, sexually explicit content, politically sensitive content, terrorist content, prohibited content, religious content, advertising traffic diversion, and inappropriate content.

  • Baseline Check: Detects pornography (including text-image pornography), sexy content, terrorist content (including text-image terrorist content), prohibited content (including text-image prohibited content), flags, inappropriate content, abuse, and special elements.

  • AIGC image detection: Determines whether an image is likely generated by AIGC.

  • AI-Generated Image Detection_Ultimate: Detection target: Images. Detection content: Whether images are suspected to be AI-generated or synthesized, whether they are suspected to be composites (including face synthesis), and whether they show signs of AI local editing.

Pornography, politically sensitive and terrorist content, text-image violations, inappropriate scenes, special logos, QR codes

Risk detection labels

100+

Note

For a full list of labels, see the Risk label interpretation table.

40+

Note

For a full list of labels, see label.

Console

  1. Configure detection items

  2. Set up custom image libraries

  3. Set up custom dictionaries

  4. Copy services (for multiple business needs)

  5. Query results for up to 30 days

Note

For more information, see the Console operation guide.

  1. Configure detection items

  2. Set up custom image libraries

  3. Query results for up to 7 days

Supported image formats

PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP, WEBP, TIFF, SVG, GIF, ICO, HEIC

PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, WEBP

Billing

Billed per service. Each service detects multiple risks simultaneously.

Cost = Number of images × Number of services

Billed separately for the following services:

  • Image Moderation for Large and Small Model Integration_China Version

  • Image Moderation for Large and Small Model Integration

  • Image Moderation for Large and Small Model Integration_For entering the Chinese mainland

  • Baseline Check

  • AIGC image detection

  • AI-Generated Image Detection_Ultimate

Billing is based on threat scenarios (scene).

Billed per risk scenario (scene). Cost = Number of images × Number of risk scenarios

Billed separately for the following risk scenarios:

  • Image pornography detection

  • Politically sensitive and terrorist content

  • Text-image violations

  • Inappropriate scenes

  • Special logos

  • QR codes

Services

Image Moderation V2.0 supports the following services:

Scenario

Service

Detected content

Applicable scenarios

LLM moderation

Image Moderation for Large and Small Model Integration (postImageCheckByVL_global)

Combines large-model and expert-model capabilities to detect pornography, sexually explicit content, politically sensitive content, terrorist content, prohibited content, religious content, flags, advertising traffic diversion, inappropriate content, abuse, and other violations. Returns detailed labels. For a full list of detectable items, see the AI Guardrails Console.

Use this service when high accuracy is required. Recommended as the preferred choice. For more information, see LLM-based image moderation enhanced service.

LLM moderation (entering the Chinese mainland)

Image Moderation for Large and Small Model Integration_China Version (postImageCheckByVL_ec)

Designed for entering-the-Chinese-mainland scenarios. Combines large-model and expert-model capabilities to detect pornography, sexually explicit content, politically sensitive content, terrorist content, prohibited content, religious content, advertising traffic diversion, and inappropriate content in images. Returns detailed labels.

Use this service when high accuracy is required for content entering the Chinese mainland. Recommended as the preferred choice.

General-purpose scenarios

Baseline Check (baselineCheck_global)

Detects pornography, sexually explicit content, terrorist content, prohibited content, flags, inappropriate content, abuse, and special elements in images. Includes both visual content and embedded text in 18 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Arabic, Filipino, Hindi, Türkiye, Russian, Italian, and Dutch. For a full list of detectable items, see the AI Guardrails Console.

Use this service to detect whether images contain noncompliant or unsuitable content. Apply it to all images exposed to the public internet.

AIGC scenarios

AIGC image detection (aigcDetector_global)

Detection target: Images. Detection content: Whether images are suspected to be AI-generated or synthesized.

Use this service to determine whether images are AI-generated. Apply it to tag image sources. For more information, see Image Moderation Enhanced 2.0 AIGC scenario detection service.

AIGC scenarios

AI-Generated Image Detection_Ultimate (aigcDetector_ultra_global)

Detection target: Images. Detection content: Whether images are suspected to be AI-generated or synthesized, whether they are suspected to be composites (including face synthesis), and whether they show signs of AI local editing.

Use this service to determine whether images are forged. Recommended for image forensics, especially when determining whether images have been locally edited by AI. For more information, see Image Moderation Enhanced 2.0 AIGC scenario detection service.

Use postImageCheckByVL_global for businesses operating outside mainland China. Use postImageCheckByVL_ec for businesses serving users within mainland China.

2. Billing

Pay-as-you-go

Image Moderation 2.0 uses pay-as-you-go billing by default. You are charged only when you call a service. The following table lists the API pricing.

Moderation type

Supported business scenarios (services)

Unit price

Standard image moderation (image_standard)

  • Baseline Check: baselineCheck_global

  • Global AIGC Image Identification: aigcDetector_global

0.6 USD per 1,000 calls

Note

One call to Baseline Check counts as one billing unit. For example, 100 calls cost 0.06 USD.

Advanced image moderation (image_advanced)

  • Large- and small-model fusion image moderation: postImageCheckByVL_global

1.2 USD per 1,000 calls

Note

You are charged for each invocation. For example, 100 invocations cost 0.12 USD.

Large-model image moderation (China) (image_vl_standard_cn)

  • China mainland LLM Image Moderation: postImageCheckByVL_ec

0.7 USD per 1,000 calls

Note

One call to the China mainland LLM image moderation service counts as one billing unit. For example, 100 calls cost 0.07 USD.

Note

Content Moderation 2.0 pay-as-you-go usage is billed every 24 hours. In the billing detail report, the moderationType field corresponds to the moderation type field described earlier. You can view Billing Details.

Resource plan deduction

If your moderation volume is large or predictable, purchase a resource plan. Larger plans offer lower per-unit costs than pay-as-you-go pricing. For more information, see Purchase Content Moderation 2.0 resource plans.

Content Moderation 2.0 resource plans offset usage of Content Moderation 2.0 and cannot be shared with the Content Moderation 1.0 data transfer plan. The specific offset factors are as follows:

Moderation type

Offset factor

Standard image moderation (image_standard)

2: Each successful API call deducts 2 units from the resource plan quota.

Note

For example, if your resource plan quota is 10 units and you make 1 successful API call, 2 units are deducted, leaving 8 units.

Advanced image moderation (image_advanced)

4: Each successful API call deducts 4 units from the resource plan quota.

Note

For example, if your resource plan quota is 10 units and you make 1 successful API call, 4 units are deducted, leaving 6 units.

Large-model image moderation for entering the Chinese mainland (image_vl_standard_cn)

2.34: Each successful API call deducts 2.34 units from the resource plan quota.

Note

For example, if your resource plan quota is 100 units and you make 1 successful API call, 2.34 units are deducted, leaving 97.66 units.

After purchase, Image Moderation 2.0 API usage is deducted from your resource plan quota first. When the quota runs out, pay-as-you-go billing applies automatically. Monitor your remaining quota and charges. You can set low-balance alerts in the Resource Plan System in the Alibaba Cloud User Center.

3. Usage

Integration

Image Moderation 2.0 supports SDK integration and native HTTPS integration:

Console operations

  • Before your first API call, configure your image moderation policy in the AI Guardrails Console.

  • In the console, you can adjust the detection scope, configure per-business policies, manage custom image libraries and dictionaries, and view call results and usage.

  • After adjusting your moderation policy, run effect testing in the console to verify the results.

For step-by-step instructions, see the Console