Microsoft appears to be working on a new YouTube-like tool for videos. In a recently filed patent, the tech giant describes a product that users can use, like Shazam, to identify videos with copyrighted material.
As spotted by Windows Report, Microsoft may be working on an app that works similarly to YouTube’s Copyright Match Tool. This means that it would be able to automatically detect unauthorized use of copyrighted video content. The goal of the app is to give content creators and broadcasting companies a way to find this unauthorized material.
To use the app, the user just has to submit a “target video” and a “reference video.” From there, the tool compares the two videos, checking if the target video:
- Has all the shots from the reference video.
- Includes groups of shots that are also in the reference video.
- Has shots that are all in the same order as the reference video.
But it appears users won’t need to have both a target video and reference video for the app to work. In this situation, the app will work with the information it has versus its existing database. As explained by the patent:
The target video and/or reference video may be selected by a user, or programmatically. In one particular example, the target video is selected by a user and there reference video is selected programmatically.
Reportedly, the app will rely on Google, Bing, and other search engines to create this existing database of videos.
It’s currently unknown how Microsoft plans to use this tool, but the outlet suggests it could become a standalone app or be featured in another Microsoft product. There’s a possibility that it could become a plugin for Microsoft Copilot sometime in the future. But like any other patent, there’s no guarantee that the tool will be made available to the public.
