It's no secret that most radio talk shows have a slight delay before a caller's audio reaches the air. The obvious reason: to make sure no "f-bombs" reach the sensitive ears of the public --- or the FCC.



Well, Microsoft has been awarded a

patent

that might eliminate the need for that delay. The patent, 7437290, is for "Automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast" was first filed in 2004. Here's how it's described:

An input audio data stream comprising speech is processed by an automatic censoring filter in either a real-time mode, or a batch mode, producing censored speech that has been altered so that undesired words or phrases are either unintelligible or inaudible. The automatic censoring filter employs a lattice comprising either phonemes and/or words derived from phonemes for comparison against corresponding phonemes or words included in undesired speech data. If the probability that a phoneme or word in the input audio data stream matches a corresponding phoneme or word in the undesired speech data is greater than a probability threshold, 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.