PlayStation's AI Censorship Tool Is Angering Gamers, 'Black Mirror Is Here'

In what may be the least surprising development of 2025, it would seem that Sony’s newly unveiled AI censorship patent has upset gamers online.

Why, you may ask? Because it’s legitimately terrifying, and has some genuinely upsetting applications that sound like they were ripped straight out of Cyberpunk 2077.

Yesterday, GAMINGbible reported on a story about Sony’s recently published “US20250372124” patent, titled “AUTOMATIC BESPOKE EDITS OF VIDEO CONTENT USING AI”.

If you want the full details, I highly suggest reading Angharad's breakdown of its contents, but I’ll do my best to give you the cliff notes.

Patent US20250372124 was filed by Sony (based on its application date) on May 28, 2025, but was only recently made accessible following its publication date on December 4 this year.

As the title of the patent implies, the tech detailed within the document would allow for the “obfuscation” (a fancy word for censorship) of “audio video” content through the use of an “artificial neural network” (which is a form of AI that, in very basic terms, mimics the structure of the human brain).

In short, the patent would allow for the censorship of objectionable content through the use of microphones and cameras, which could even be used “to determine that children are present or that a particular person recognized via facial ID is present”.

The applicant of the patent is Sony Interactive Entertainment, which may lead you to believe that this would be a PlayStation-exclusive piece of tech.

Unfortunately, you’d be wrong, as the patent description states that the “client components” could include “one or more computing devices” such as a “Sony PlayStation® or a game console made by Microsoft or Nintendo or other manufacturer”.

Oh, but don’t worry– it’s not just for video game consoles!

Image taken from patent WO2025250246 listing, Sony Interactive Entertainment

The patent description also states that it could be used for “movies/motion pictures” and “user-uploaded videos streamed over the Internet” too.

There’s even a bit that says it “may also apply to text/written content such as books and Internet website content as well”. Jesus Christ, man. Books? Websites!? The Labour government is gonna have a field day with this one.

Naturally, folks over on the r/gaming subreddit aren’t too fond of the applications detailed within the patent’s description.

“Oh boy. You thought framegen added input lag? Just wait until your game tries to do real time dynamic censorship with AI integration. Yippee!” commented user Ub3ros.

“Autocrats everywhere are nodding and clapping. Let's all hope AI really is overhyped”, replied user HisDivineOrder.

“Literally the mute feature from Black Mirror's White Christmas special episode”, commented user JerbTrooneet.

Now, it would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that the patent outright states its applications would be “based on user-provided content filtering parameters”.

Basically, the “bespoke” part of the patent title means that all of the censored content would be user-controlled, so, in its current form, it couldn’t be used to suppress content against your will, 1984-style.

However, if you ask me, its applications are still terrifying, because (as recent examples like the UK Online Safety Act have proven) there’s a non-zero percent chance that governmental bodies won’t adopt this patent’s uses for their own nefarious purposes.

At this point, we can only hope that Sony intends to gatekeep this patent for themselves, because the idea of any government authority or regime getting their hands on it will be keeping me up at night for the foreseeable future.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go look at loads of salacious, ultra-violent content while I still can, like the episode of Peppa Pig that got banned in Australia for stating that spiders aren’t dangerous.