Google’s Nexus One

Google’s Nexus One automatically cuts swear words as part of its text-to-speech input system. read on to find out what all the *@%!ing fuss is about… Being able to handle text-to-speech messages and emails is one of the biggest highlights the new Google Nexus One brings to the table, or at least so long as your message is polite. According to Reuters, swear words are intercepted and replaced with a string of hash symbols before the offending word is transmitted over the airwaves. There’s no way to turn the feature off, either. The news agency says Google’s reasoning for doing so is less about playing language police than guarding against errors inherent to voice-to-text systems. “We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognise a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent,” Google is quoted as saying in a statement. “Ultimately our goal is to return results that show exactly what you said, and we’re constantly working to improve the technology to better fit our users’ needs,” the statement continued. It’s not clear whether the censorship is limited to just English profanities, but we assume versions sold in non-English speaking countries will come with the same safeguard.

Font: http://www.fonehome.co.uk/2010/01/google-nexus-one-censors-swearing/