Silicon Valley giant Intel has announced that it will be releasing an AI program named Bleep that is capable of censoring “offensive” and racist speech from gaming audio. Intel claims that the AI tool will allow users to detect and remove toxic speech from their voice chat.”
Forbes reports that tech firm Intel has announced that it has plans to release a new AI program that will censor various types of offensive and racist speech from gaming audio. The program, called Bleep, will provide users with a sliding scale of hate speech options, but now social media users are calling the program “hilarious/horrifying.”
Bleep is still currently under development and is expected to launch sometime in 2021. The program will be integrated into the audio system of Intel desktop and laptop computers. Bleep is designed to let users “detect and remove toxic speech from their voice chat” as a “key step” towards eliminating toxicity online, specifically in gaming, according to Intel vice president Roger Chandler.
An image of the software was revealed during Intel’s showcase. The software includes a sliding scale to determine where a user wants to hear “none,” “some,” “most” or “all” speech that falls under a category of offensive language, including ableism, body shaming, aggression, LGBTQ+ hate, misogyny, name-calling, racism, xenophobia, sexually explicit language, swearing, white nationalism, and a slider determining how often the user wants to hear the “N-word.”
The sliding scale feature was designed to accommodate different situations according to Kim Pallister, general manager of Intel’s gaming solutions team. Pallister stated that users may want more permissive speech options if they’re playing games with friends, or some games may include offensive in-game audio that users still want to hear.
Marcus Kennedy, general manager of the gaming and esports segment in Intel’s client computing group, told Forbes: “I think it would have been naive to step into this space to try to do something here if we didn’t expect any kind of dialogue. We absolutely expected this to generate something, but from our perspective, the right thing to do is to continue to anchor on empowering the gamer and we will stand behind that no matter what kind of pushback we get.”
Many also took to social media to ridicule the program:
Read more at Forbes here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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