Deezer Wants To Use AI To Detect Explicit Lyrics In Songs

We’re sure that you can come across CDs and songs on streaming platforms that have been labeled as having explicit content, usually to indicate if a song has swear words that might not be appropriate for underaged listeners. These labels are either suggested by the label or the artist or a human would have to manually go through them to put a label on it.

This can be a tedious process and not particularly efficient, but Deezer is hoping to make it easier. The company has announced that they have been testing the use of AI to help detect whether or not a song may contain explicit lyrics, but the company’s approach will be slightly different from what you might expect.

If you have some knowledge about programming or training AI, you might assume that the AI model will be trained by feeding it a bunch of samples of words and phrases deemed to be “explicit”, and then have the AI attempt to listen to songs to figure out which songs contain those words or phrases. However, Deezer claims that this approach could result in it being hard to explain why the AI has decided to apply the explicit label.

Instead, the company has opted for what they’re calling a modular approach, which is by separating vocals from the track, and then running those vocals through a dictionary of known explicit keywords before deciding whether or not the song might warrant an explicit label.

That being said, Deezer notes that while their system does yield promising results, they do not believe that it is ready for prime time where it can be utilized in a fully automated manner. However, it does not mean that it isn’t useful. It could still be used in tandem with a human, where the system can flag songs which can then be further reviewed by humans to come to a final decision.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Audio, General
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), deezer, Entertainment, Music