Here’s something that was bound to get discovered. Give a guy—any average Joe—a gadget that plays around with words, like a program that reads out stuff you type or another that types out stuff you say, and average Joe is bound to test if it can recognize certain four-letter words we all tend to blurt out every now and then. It appears someone tried it out on Google’s Nexus One, a phone that comes with a speech-to-text feature. The result? The Nexus One will automatically “censor” your #### out.
The speech-to-text function will clean out "foul language," just in case you meant something else.
In other words, it replaces curse words with a line of # characters, automatically cleaning your potty text-mouth with what can be considered as the digital equivalent of soap and water. But the issue is, why the #### would this phone care if you used profanity when texting a buddy?
According to a spokesperson from Google, it doesn’t actually care about what you say, but they do care about getting it right. “We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent,” goes the explanation. That means it cleans up questionable-sounding words just in case you said something that sounded like a cuss word, but meant something else.
The technology’s not perfect, and according to the statement, they’re working to make it better. But really, I think average Joe just wants the option to switch the auto-“filter” on or off. After all, what if we just want to call someone an ###hole?
Fun-fact-that-has-absolutely-nothing-to-do-with-the-topic #1001241:
There’s a little town in Austria named “Fucking” (proper pronunciation rhymes with cooking) with a population of just over 100 people. Founded by a Bavarian nobleman named Focko during the 6th century, this town’s most famous feature is its road signs (which is also probably the most-stolen road sign in the world). Tourists from all over flock to this little town just to have their picture taken beside the signs, but there’s nothing much to do, nothing much to see. Nothing to buy either: you can’t even get Fucking postcards or Fucking keychains.
Tags: Google Nexus One, Mobile Phones, Mobile Software
