Last month Intel Corp. announced that it was working on a solution to cut down on toxic speech that gamers hear when playing multiplayer games online, but already that solution is being called “absurd.”

The technology, named “Bleep,” uses artificial intelligence to “detect and redact” audio based on what users have chosen as the content they don’t want to hear. A filter will be available to those using the service, so they can choose not to listen to speech that relates to racism and xenophobia, the N-word, body shaming, cursing, name-calling, white nationalism, LGBTQ+ hate, misogyny and more.

This will work by monitoring the audio that comes out of a person’s microphone. When the audio is incoming, the AI will mute or bleep the speech the person has chosen not to hear.

This is still a work in progress, with Bleep set to be available to the public sometime this year. “With Bleep, we’re enabling gamers to take control of their conversations, one key step to eliminating toxicity in gaming today,” Intel marketing engineer Craig Raymond said. “The app interfaces our AI models into the Windows architecture to integrate the feature transparently into your voice applications.”

That sounds like a decent piece of technology, but the criticism has come because of how it works. In Bleep’s settings users can choose just how much toxicity they want to hear using a sliding scale, which means that they could choose to hear no misogyny, some misogyny, most of it or all of it.

People might wonder, and some have, why Intel has chosen this sliding scale, which does sound somewhat unorthodox. In an interview with Forbes, Kim Pallister, general manager of Intel’s gaming solutions team, said there are various situations, saying playing with friends, where people might want a different setting. She also said that the company is still working on the app and by no means is it a done deal – although it seems the sliding scale might stay in some capacity.

Intel has also said that it expected some criticism regarding Bleep, but with studies pointing to the fact that online gaming is pervaded with various kinds of hate speech, a solution had to be sought. The product will be released in beta test mode, after which Intel will make adjustments based on the feedback.

Photo: Intel