Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed a patent describing an AI-driven system that can automatically filter, obscure, or replace parts of audiovisual content during playback. This includes video games as well.
The patent essentially describes a processor running an AI model that identifies aspects of audiovisual content flagged for obfuscation via user input. The system is able to identify it using a transcript, the audio or the video itself, or other metadata, and then take action to prevent the flagged material from being presented.
These actions don’t simply mute the audio or black-screen the video. The patent lists options including muting specific audio, inserting beeps instead of objectionable speech, skipping or removing segments, pausing before a flagged moment, overlaying a censor image, pixelating, or blurring the video. It also supposedly can generate and store a separate, clean version of the same content. However, it’s not clear how this will work with interactive media like video games.
The filing says the system could use a second model to replace objectionable segments with different content that wasn’t flagged, and it’s explicitly called a “deepfake generator model.”
While the obvious pitch is parental controls, the filing frames it more broadly as user-specific sensitivities that conventional ratings don’t cover well. It even notes that standards change over time. The examples get oddly specific: beyond profanity, nudity, drugs, and violence, it suggests a user might want to block clowns and red balloons.
Implementation-wise, the patent leaves the door wide open: the logic could run at the operating system level, inside a media player, or in another app, and it could be handled locally on the device or offloaded to a server.
Despite the immediate concerns that were raised by many, none of this means PlayStation is about to ship “real-time censorship mode” in a system update. Patents are often defensive, experimental, or exploratory, and companies file plenty of things that never turn into products.
Still, considering the latest developments in real or alleged censorship, like BrownDust2’s latest Steam launch cancellation and Valve declining to host the horror game Horses, anything that could add to it receives extra scrutiny.
