France-based Spotter is reported to have developed an analytics tool which can identify sarcastic comments posted online.
The tool, which the company claims will have 80% accuracy, is being used by the European Union Commission, the Home Office and Dubai courts.
Spotter UK sales director Richard May told the BBC that the company monitored material that was "publicly available".
May added that the tool uses a combination of linguistics, semantics and heuristics to create algorithms that generate reports about a company’s online reputation.
He noted that algorithms had been developed to reflect various tones in 29 different languages including Chinese, Russian and Arabic.
May was quoted by the BBC as saying that "Nothing is fool-proof – we are talking about automated systems."
"But five years ago you couldn’t get this level of accuracy – we were at the 50% mark," May said.
Spotter charged a minimum of £1,000 per month for its services, May said.
