Best 5 PII Redaction APIs for 2022-2023
Tags: ai, nlp, security, privacy
Published: 2022-09-06 22:51:15

Any company that handles customer data must meet internal privacy requirements or external compliance regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. With digital data, manually finding and removing this sensitive information at scale can be nearly impossible.

Some companies are looking to create features or products that can remove or redact this confidential data automatically. State-of-the-Art AI models that power [APIs for PII (Personally Identifiable Information) Redaction](https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/what-are-the-top-pii-redaction-apis-and-ai-models/) can help.

Built using cutting-edge Machine Learning research, PII Redaction APIs can automatically identify PII in bodies of text and remove, redact, or sensor this sensitive content–at high accuracy. Some PII Redaction APIs also work in conjunction with Speech-to-Text APIs to redact confidential information in transcriptions or to remove utterances from audio/video streams. 

If you’re considering building tools with a PII Redaction API, there are several top choices to consider. This article examines the **best APIs on the market for performing PII Redaction for 2022/2023:**

## 1. AssemblyAI

AssemblyAI is an API platform for State-of-the-Art, production-ready AI models for ASR, NLP, and NLU applications. Developers and enterprises transcribe audio/video streams with its [Speech-to-Text API](https://www.assemblyai.com/blog/the-top-free-speech-to-text-apis-and-open-source-engines/) and then create powerful, intelligent tools on top of that transcription data using its AI models such as PII Redaction, Content Moderation, Summarization, Sentiment Analysis, and more. 

AssemblyAI’s PII Redaction API detects and replaces confidential content like social security numbers, credit card numbers, and addresses with a series of `#` for each redacted character. The API can also beep out spoken PII in the audio file as well.

Pricing for AssemblyAI’s PII Redaction API starts at $.000583 per second on top of its core transcription pricing. 

## 2. Private AI

[Private AI](https://www.private-ai.com/) is another top tier PII Redaction API that lets users identify, replace, or redact PII in large text documents, audio/video files, or even images. The API also supports redaction across multiple languages. 

For text files, users can choose to replace redacted data with a series of `#` or to replace the data with synthetic data if security issues are a concern. For images, the API will blur out the needed PII. 

Pricing for Private AI is broken into three tiers, depending on usage: Starter, Scale, and Pro. 

## 3. Amazon Transcribe

[Amazon Transcribe](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/transcribe/latest/dg/pii-redaction.html) also offers its own PII Redaction API for text and live or asynchronous audio/video streams, though only for English.

Amazon Transcribe’s PII Redaction API can identify and redact PII such as bank account numbers, bank routing numbers, email addresses, credit card numbers, credit card CVV codes, and more. However, its documentation states that its PII Redaction API does not meet the requirements to meet privacy laws such as HIPAA. 

Pricing for Amazon Transcribe and its PII Redaction API can be a bit hard to decipher but interested users can calculate estimated pricing based on usage needs [here](https://calculator.aws/#/createCalculator/Transcribe). 

## 4. Azure

[Azure](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/language-service/personally-identifiable-information/quickstart?pivots=programming-language-csharp) has another top-rated API for PII Redaction. The API can identify, remove, or redact sensitive entities such as a person’s name, job type, medical information, IP address, account numbers, SWIFT codes, and more. Redaction is only available for files with text in English. 

Users must have an Azure account and [Visual Studio IDE](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/) to use its PII Redaction API. To get started, follow Azure’s quickstart guide [here](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/language-service/personally-identifiable-information/quickstart?pivots=programming-language-csharp). 

## 5. Super.ai

Finally, [Super.ai](https://super.ai/redact) is another great PII Redaction API for removing/redacting confidential information in text, video, and images. Its PII Redaction API is also compliant with stringent international data privacy regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, PIPL, and PIPA.

The API returns each redacted file with the redacted PII airbrushed out of the document/image or replaced with pseudonyms. 

Those interested in learning more about Super.ai or its pricing structure can sign up for a free demo [here](https://super.ai/super-redact/document-redact
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vfzhhpwv02rua73vk00u.jpg)).