Apple Patents Music Streaming Censorship Technology

Apple has quite a significant number of patent applications, detailing a lot of ideas, but its latest patent application is one of the more interesting ones.

The global giant brand is currently working on something that could automatically scan, and censor, streaming content. The patent app, which is entitled, “Management, Replacement and Removal of Explicit Lyrics during Audio Playback,” automatically scans tracks,
compares that against a database of “banned words,” marks that content, and then removes it from the streaming track.

Apple says the technology has the potential to replace swear words with other words, delete them from tracks entirely, beep them out or fill the places where they would normally be with music.

The company is also considering using its new censoring software for audiobooks, to edit out sex scenes as well as curse words. The system works by analysing songs or audio books, and comparing each word to a library of explicit terms in order to identify the naughty ones.