Roblox's AI tool rephrases your chats to avoid profanity
What's the story
Roblox, the popular online gaming platform, has announced a new feature that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to rephrase chat messages in real time. The move is aimed at improving user experience by replacing banned words and phrases with more respectful language while keeping the original intent of the message intact. This goes beyond the current practice of simply replacing certain words with "#" symbols.
Feature details
How the AI chat rephrasing works
The new feature from Roblox's AI will automatically replace offensive phrases with more respectful alternatives. For instance, if a user types "Hurry TF up!" in the chat, it will be changed to "Hurry up!" by the AI. Whenever this happens, all participants in the chat are notified about the change to maintain civility. This is different from other platforms like Minecraft which only censor profanity without rewording messages.
User safety
Age-verified chats only
The real-time chat rephrasing feature is only available for "in-experience" chats between age-verified players in the same age group. This comes after Roblox started enforcing age checks to use its chat features last month. Once a user's age is verified, they can communicate with other players within their respective age brackets (for example, users aged 9-12 can talk to those aged 13-15).
Safety measures
Chat is key to connecting players, says Roblox
Rajiv Bhatia, VP of User and Discovery Product at Roblox, emphasized the importance of chat in connecting players on their platform. He said the new feature "helps keep gameplay and conversations on track while guiding language toward what's appropriate." The company is also improving its text-filtering system to catch more variations of banned language. Early results show it is getting better at detecting leetspeak and other sophisticated filter circumvention attempts.
Legal challenges
Facial verification for chatting on Roblox
The announcement of the AI-powered chat rephrasing feature comes shortly after Roblox made facial verification mandatory for accessing chats on its platform. The move follows a string of lawsuits over child safety from the attorneys general of Texas, Kentucky, and Louisiana. These lawsuits were filed after reports claimed that Roblox was putting young users at risk by exposing them to grooming and explicit content.