Audio Signal De-Identification

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed for automatically de-identifying spoken audio signals. In particular, techniques are disclosed for automatically removing personally identifying information from spoken audio signals and replacing such information with non-personally identifying information. De-identification of a spoken audio signal may be performed by automatically generating a report based on the spoken audio signal. The report may include concept content (e.g., text) corresponding to one or more concepts represented by the spoken audio signal. The report may also include timestamps indicating temporal positions of speech in the spoken audio signal that corresponds to the concept content. Concept content that represents personally identifying information is identified. Audio corresponding to the personally identifying concept content is removed from the spoken audio signal. The removed audio may be replaced with non-personally identifying audio.

1 . A method comprising steps of:
 (A) identifying a first portion of an original audio signal, the first portion representing sensitive information; and   (B) producing a modified audio signal in which the identified first portion is protected against unauthorized disclosure.