There is a Mature filter on imgur already that's human-determined. The problem is that people posting pictures will mark things mature unnecessarily, and there have been trolls who put up hardcore pornography without marking the image as mature. The problem is, as always, trusting humans to do the right thing without massive consequence for doing the wrong thing.
I agree that should be the default but getting the data to do it automatically is hard if you're going to ask users to mark things NSFW on their own accord.