Speech Recognition Software

[frogamus]

I broke out an old copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking yesterday and installed it on my XP system. It's about 10 years old. I stopped using it shortly after I bought it because I never had any real use for it. They aren't really much use for writing programs. But since I have been trying to develop a website, I thought I would pick it up and give it a whirl. It seems to work fairly well but there is a lot of training.

I was wondering what kind of success others have had and if anyone had any insights on newer speech recognition programs.

Thanks.

[merrillmck]

What is Dragon Naturally Speaking? My guess is you train it to recognize your voice and eventually you can "write" a paper using only your voice ... at least that's the goal.

So how does that tie into your website? Do you want your website to have that type of functionality?

And sorry, I don't have any advice/experience to offer. I've written computer vision programs (computers attempt to recognize what is in images) so I'm interested in this topic as it is very related.

[frogamus]

What is Dragon Naturally Speaking? My guess is you train it to recognize your voice and eventually you can "write" a paper using only your voice ... at least that's the goal.

Yes. You Talk. It Types what ever you say. Setting up a new user you read a small article so it can learn how you speak. After setup when it makes a mistake you correct it. The more you use it the better it gets. You use different voice commands to perform different tasks. You can navigate between different programs, through menus or click buttons.

So how does that tie into your website? Do you want your website to have that type of functionality?

I was considering using it to make it easier to write with. It doesn't make spelling errors and I find it hard to keep my train of thought going. I never used it before because I mostly did programming as a hobby. It's not very good for writing code.

[zen-r]

Lol. I think DragonNS was the last time I dabbled with voice recognition software as well. Yes, it must have been about 10 years ago.

Perhaps it scarred both of us so badly, that it put us both off for life! ;)

I remember having high hopes for it when I first tried it out, only to be disappointed to find that there were so many errors which needed editing, that it was quicker to type it in the first place. I also remember that as a Brit, I found that I got best results by putting on an American accent!

I can't remember if it was only for dictating text, though, or if it could also be used for controlling other software.

The only voice recognition I use at the moment is on 2 non-PC devices.

In my mobile phone/PDA/satnav/camera (all-in-one): I installed MS Voice Command & it has proven a great enhancement, because it integrates nicely with most programs on the device. For example, I can now tell it to play a specific music track, or whole album (without having to search for it myself) or get it to read me all songs by a certain artist. I can tell it to open any program, such as the web browser. I've assigned the Voice program to 1 hot key, so a quick press is all it takes before I can start talking to my device!

And I have set it so that when someone calls me, it automatically checks my address book & if they are in there, it tells me who is calling instead of just playing a ring tone. It doesn't read everything perfectly, but well enough for me to understand who it is.

In my TomTom GPS/satnav: the pre-installed voice software in there is great because it means I can tell the device about where I want to go, even while I'm driving (thus keeping it legal). And, of course, it can read out directions to me & even tell me which streets to look out for as I'm driving along. This is far better than my last device which just said, for example, to "take the next left" - regularly leaving me unsure about which "left" it meant, & having to glance dangerously at the screen.


So voice recognition still has lots of very worthwhile uses - though personally I have yet to need any on my PC!

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[frogamus]

I remember having high hopes for it when I first tried it out, only to be disappointed to find that there were so many errors which needed editing, that it was quicker to type it in the first place. I also remember that as a Brit, I found that I got best results by putting on an American accent!

I sometimes wonder if I may have some of the same problem. I’ve been told I’m a little on the Texan side myself.

I can't remember if it was only for dictating text, though, or if it could also be used for controlling other software.

I know you can launch programs and I have been able to use it in all the programs I tried. Recent versions are available and I’m sure they must have made some progress in the past 10 years.

Edit:
A little more information on the subject.

I have Windows Vista Home Premium on my desktop and it as far as I know is part of Vista. It refers to itself as Windows Speech Recognition in the tutorial. I worked partly through the tutorial but I really haven’t tried it outside of that.

It is listed as Speech Recognition in the Control Panel. I couldn’t get to start up without a microphone hooked up. Maybe someone knows if it is worth the time and effort.

By the way zen-r, it has a recognition engine of the US and the UK.

[sangeetjass]

Do you think voice recognition softwares can take over the Medical Transcription industry one day....I think if this happens it will be the first win of Artifician Intelligence over Human being taking our jobs away.

[Livewire]

Do you think voice recognition softwares can take over the Medical Transcription industry one day....I think if this happens it will be the first win of Artifician Intelligence over Human being taking our jobs away.

I have my doubts; there's too many variations/accents on something like English to code in, let alone all the varying dialects of Spanish, French, German, Japanese, etc.

While it might get popular in one area, it won't experience success in another (due to the lack of being able to recognize a particular accent without -some- additional coding - I know it can "learn," but from my own experience it frequently seems to un-learn what it did learn because of accent/dialect issues), until it gets some additional programming behind it.


Guess what I'm saying is it's still way easier to teach someone to type 120WPM and have them transcribe it instead of a computer program, especially if the doctor/scientist/researcher has to keep going back to correct the typos the program is making.

[Sharky]

With regards to medical transcription -- I've heard the voice recordings: it's hard enough understanding what they're saying for a person, a machine simply wouldn't cope.

However -- I've had fairly positive experiences with Microsoft's own voice recognition software in Vista. Leaps and bounds ahead of XP's one. Only problem is that (with my set up at least -- desktop microphone instead of headset one) it still can't cope with a washing machine in the background, for example. With the noise reduction software that came with my sound card, it can almost cope with music, but still not good enough for proper production use. Nor is it exceptionally good at figuring out which is my voice, and when I'm trying to dictate, vs when I'm trying to have a conversation that doesn't need transcribing.

And by far the biggest issue, you feel like a bit of a numpty talking to your PC. Especially when it doesn't reply. Almost like talking to a brick wall.

[frogamus]

However -- I've had fairly positive experiences with Microsoft's own voice recognition software in Vista. Leaps and bounds ahead of XP's one.

The version I have of XP(Home Edition) didn’t come with any speech recognition software only Text To Speech.

And by far the biggest issue, you feel like a bit of a numpty talking to your PC. Especially when it doesn't reply. Almost like talking to a brick wall.

That will take some getting used to. The program I’m using right now(Dragon NaturallySpeaking) will work with either speech or recordings so there is the option of using a dictation machine or even a mp3 player for input. I may need to set up a separate user for recordings though.

Edit:

Do you think voice recognition softwares can take over the Medical Transcription industry one day....I think if this happens it will be the first win of Artifician Intelligence over Human being taking our jobs away.

I personally don’t think it will happen any time soon . You can train them to suit your own vocabulary, but medical records are to important to be making mistakes. It’s hard enough just being human for even the medical people to get it right all the time. It could mean the difference between life and death if you make a mistake in someone’s medical record.

[merrillmck]

I have my doubts; there's too many variations/accents on something like English to code in, let alone all the varying dialects of Spanish, French, German, Japanese, etc.

It, like image recognition (just voice recognition in 2+ dimensions) and action recognition (3+ dimensions), is a very difficult problem.

While better algorithms and faster hardware will always make these technologies improve, there are some who believe there is a ceiling that can never be passed. As a metaphor, humans often have to ask someone else to repeat themselves (voice). We often need to squint or move closer or use context clues to recognize something visually --- and then we're often taking an educated guess.

In my opinion, recognition technologies will be used in specific situations: those situations where errors are tolerated; situations where a computer's great memory can be leveraged (humans have trouble memorizing a database); controlled situations (limiting the problem); and situations where using people is more expensive than using a computer or a computer's assistance.