- Saturday, 11 July 2009
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If I had all the money I've spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink. - Tame Alien
Microsoft patents speech censoring
THE GLORIOUS software empire, upon which the sun never sets, has managed to get a patent for censoring speech.
Microsoft has been awarded patent number 7,437,290 in which an input audio data stream comprising speech is processed by an automatic censoring filter in either a real-time mode, or a batch mode.
The big idea is that the speech is censored so that undesired words or phrases are either unintelligible or inaudible. It means that if your call centre employee starts swearing at a customer, the punter would never know. If the software was installed on a company phone then it would be impossible to say anything that the company didn’t want you to say.
According to the patent the automatic censoring filter employs a lattice comprising either phonemes and words derived from them. It compares these against a list of words included in undesired speech data.
If there is a match 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. The censored speech can either be stored or made available to an audience in real-time. µ
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What ever happened to that old document we used to refer as First Amendment. Guess its time to update the First Amendment for the IT renascence.
I'm pretty sure China has prior art on this. Skype anyone?
I can only see this system making for interesting conversations when it blocks or alters the words 'fork','cant' and 'site'.
I look forward to hearing examples of the hilarity that will ensue when it gets it wrong.
Slowly but surely, censorship creeps into every aspect of our lives.
I wonder how this will be subverted to keep me from hearing exactly how something happened when a news broadcast is made. Or how politicians' speeches will be altered after the fact.
I'm just waiting for the day when the words "freedom of expression" will become "<beep> of <beep>".
The terrorists ? They only played Round 1. We are now doing own goals all the way.
... will "vole" be disallowed? Doesn't matter anyway, some of the best a$$ chewing sessions I've been privy too have used no vulgar words. Most languages are filled with descriptive terms that can be used in an intelligent conversation to get the point across and make the target individual understand what's really being said.

I do wonder if the frelling morons fully comprehend the depth of their stupidity, their canine heritage or the nature of their dung filled craniums. No doubt all of them have been passed from the bowel of Satan and rose to heights in the company based solely on "The Peter Principle".
Everyone living in Scunthorpe is going to be f***ed then.
Don't you just love the US Patent people? MSFT has got a patent for an obvious product using rather less than obvious ("Black Magic") technology. Speech recognition doesn't work that well....but notice how they hedge their bets, they're sure that someone, someday, will figure how to make it work and when that day comes they're be standing there with their hands out.
Can it replace words like "Have a nice day" with "screw you"?
Maybe the target audience for this is all the foul-mouthed scum and villainy with headsets on Xbox Live...