Nothing wrong with expanding into some new areas, eh? After all, Microsoft seems unable to catch up with Google on the search front, Vista hasn't been well received, and we could go on and on. Here's something that's sort of a new area to work on.
Microsoft has received a patent for what's called "Automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast." According to the patent application:
The automatic censoring filter employs a lattice comprising either phonemes and/or words derived from phonemes for comparison against corresponding phonemes or words included in undesired speech data. If the probability that a phoneme or word in the input audio data stream matches a corresponding phoneme or word in the undesired speech data is greater than a probability threshold, the input audio data stream is altered so that the undesired word or a phrase comprising a plurality of such words is unintelligible or inaudible.
In other words, if the filter detects an "f-bomb," it'll bleep it, essentially. Now before you say, what good is this, I can see a number of uses:
- Censoring live caller audio on the radio
- Censoring live "team speak" during a video game (video chat, in other words)
- Censoring live audio for live TV events
Pretty neat, though I wouldn't be surprised to see a variant of this eventually hit totalitarian regimes. Could you imagine censorship of cellular phone calls using an advanced version of this? I'm thinking China might be looking to license this (or acquire it otherwise, ahem) from Microsoft.
While this tech ain't going to prevent a Janet Jackson style faux pas, at least with it installed you can be sure you will "hear no evil."
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