#75 - What ever happened to Voice Recognition?

I really thought we would have thrown away our keyboards by now and would be talking to our computers. But alas, that hasn't happened. Voice Recognition (VR)Technology has been one of lots of talk, but not much action. I first saw a VR system in the late 80s. It came free with WordPerfect 8 and was worth what I paid for it. I tried to set it up for my mother, who dislikes typing. After 5 hours of installing, testing, trying and having my mother record her voice over and over, we were no where. The VR software recognized about 50% of her words. Now my mom has a very Midwestern clear voice. We were both chagrined.

Fast forward 12 years and I tried it again with a Covington customer. Said customer had a deep southern accent, so I knew this would be a true test. Many days later after installation, testing, and him recording test tracts 5 times, it was a no go. Way too many errors. Sigh.

Today some companies are using VR in their phone support. I'm sure you've run into the 'Say Yes if this is the option you want' over the phone. Most computer companies use a modified VR system that lets you talk in one word answers. No complicated sentences with words like Reed, Read or Write, Rite.

I still think VR will happen, just not in my lifetime. If you ask the pros, what is holding up VR is processing speed. We have plenty of memory to store all the words and phrases in the English language. We just don't have computers that are fast enough to search through those words and phrases to recognize your voice and put it in context of a sentence. On the other hand. My Garmin GPS does a remarkable job in saying street names (even though it keeps thinking DR. is Doctor instead of Drive). So once we get the VR working the response will come quickly and sound good. I guess we'll give it some more time.