Google is coming for your swear words.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant has filed to patent a way to find offensive terms in text and indicate if it “is used in an offensive manner.”
Google purports it can use machine-learning to teach computers to identify potentially offensive words, to determine whether they are used offensively based on context clues and to label them as such. The company could then use that classification method to redact offensive language from any manner of communications.
But the filing was unclear on how Google would use the technology or to whom the company might offer it.
The filing offers an example: “The word ‘shag’ may be offensive in certain contexts, but not in others. Thus, ‘I hope we can shag tonight’ may be offensive, whereas ‘This great wool shag has a beautiful pattern’ likely is not.”
This and another example in the filing use examples of potentially offensive British English-language terms, interesting since the inventors of this method are from the New York area. Perhaps they have something against Austin Powers. (He was only joking, baby.)
Google filed for the patent in April 2014, but it was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday.
Drawings in the filing suggest that Google would teach machines to run communications through a speech-recognition phase, then an offensive word classification and redaction phase before delivering them to a user’s device.
They then show examples of texts featuring the word “bloody,” which can be considered offensive depending on how it is used. In some cases, the text makes it through whole. In the offensive case, the text reads, “Stay away from here, you ****** old man!”
The company has filed for offensive-language patents in the past, such as one that would allow it to filter out offensive words or another for a method to flag and take action against users exhibiting offensive behavior.
Your profanity-laced Gchats could be safe for now: Google says it may never implement ideas from some of its patents.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Fiddlesticks. All we can do is ask.
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