Apple could soon censor swearing in your music collection

As the parent of a young child I often have to give some serious thought as to what music I play in the car when she’s with me, in order to avoid accidentally exposing her to a song peppered with swear words.

This problem could soon become a thing of the past however, as Apple has patented a method of using software to automatically censor swearing in music and audio books.

The patent, titled "Management, Replacement and Removal of Explicit Lyrics during Audio Playback" was filed by Apple in September 2014 and granted last week. The system works by identifying offensive words in audio and replacing them with alternative sounds -- bleeps for example -- or silence.

As well as censoring explicit songs and audio books, the technique could also be used in YouTube videos.

iPads are very popular with children and it’s easy to see how teachers and parents could benefit from such a system.

Apple files a lot of patents, many of which never amount to anything, but there’s a good chance we’ll see something that uses this censoring technique in the near future.