As we’ve discussed, speech recognition can be a very powerful tool. But it can’t quite complete the transcription process all on its own. There is still a gap between what its capabilities are and what would be a high quality, legible transcript. Many have tried to conquer this automated linguistic feat including Google.
On Friday, David Gallagher of the NY Times started a discussion on Google’s new Google Voice app that allows users to have their voicemail transcribed into text automatically. The Google app uses an automatic speech recognizer to decipher the spoken content into a friendly email format. While some might expect Google to be able to put the speech recognition puzzle together, even Google Voice gives us some entertaining reading material. Yesterday, Mr. Gallagher posted the results of his Google Voice testing.
As much as the speech and AI experts try to model a human’s voice, only a human ear can pick up all the tiny nuances of speech. From dialect to tone to context, so much can go wrong so fast with a machine. There is a lot speech recognition can offer, but there has to be a way to allow a human to be part of the process to ensure quality. And if search or ad delivery is part of the equation (as we might guess with our Google friends), you can imagine what happens to those results when you start with a misguided transcript.
Tags: accuracy, speech recognition, Transcription
November 23, 2009 at 11:26 pm |
[...] on our experiences with ASR capbilities in the past. In fact, we’ve even played with the very engine that will be front and center for the YouTube [...]
February 10, 2010 at 7:26 am |
I love Google Voice. There SMS feature truly got me into it. I am able to send free text messages to Bangladesh, India, and USA. It saves me some good money on my texting plan from Verizon Wireless because I can utilize that to text. I think Google always does a solid job of giving customers what they want and need. I have discovered in the future they are integrating Voice with the Android. Plus they purchased a new VoIP company which they will incorporate with the other two to give some quality features. I need to get me a Androind now haha.
June 22, 2010 at 10:04 pm |
It’s impressive that google voice is at long last out of beta and anyone is able to simply sign up for it even if they didn’t have an invitation now. I’m already playing around with its various features and finding what I can do with it. Thanks google!