Of the six speech-recognition systems tested by researchers, Siri was found to be the worst for driver distraction. The study hooked up drivers to heart-rate monitors and other equipment designed to measure the degree of stress experienced by drivers while carrying out a range of voice-command tasks, giving each system a distraction rating from 1 (best) to 5 (worst) … Expand Expanding Close
Reuters reports that a Chinese court has rejected Apple’s attempt to dismiss a claim by local company Zhizhen Internet Technology that Siri infringed its speech-recognition patent.
Zhizhen Internet Technology first alleged in 2012 that Apple’s Siri technology copied parts of its Xiao i Robot software, with pre-trial proceedings taking place last year. Apple said that it had not been aware of the patent when work began on Siri, and asked China’s State Intellectual Property Office to declare the patent invalid.
The Chinese patent office declined Apple’s request, leading Apple to file suit against it. It is this suit that has been rejected, leaving Zhizhen free to pursue its case against Apple.
Apple has said it intends to appeal to the Beijing Higher People’s Court, but suggested that a settlement might be reached by adding that “we remain open to reasonable discussions with Zhizhen.”
The backend for Siri was originally developed by Nuance, the company behind Dragon Dictate, though there have been persistent rumors that Apple plans to replace this with its own technology.
Nuance, the company that originally created the backend for the Siri mobile app that would later become the built-in virtual assistant in the iPhone 4S, has powered the speech recognition for the service ever since it launched. However, a new report suggests Apple may be looking to replace the company’s technology with a newer, faster system that could provide more accurate results.
A new Wired report cites several recent Siri-related Apple hires as evidence that the company is working on something big for the system’s next update. This isn’t really a new idea: rumors have been swirling since 2011 that Apple was investigating its own speech-to-text solution. That same year, Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky (not to be confused with current Siri Speech Manager David Winarsky) told 9to5Mac:
Dominos announced today that its launching a new voice ordering feature in its iPhone and Android apps that is powered by Nuance’s Nina Mobilevoice speech recognition, speech synthesis and natural language understanding technology. The company says the feature will provide “a human-like, conversational customer service experience that allows users to speak an order and quickly add items to their cart.” Imagine opening the app and placing your order by saying, for example, “I’d like a large pizza with extra cheese, pepperoni and onions” or “I’ll take a 14-piece order of Hot Wings”.
“There will be a day where typing on keyboards or with thumbs on mobile devices will come to a close; we want to be the ones who continue to advance the technology experience – hand-in-hand with our customers,” said Patrick Doyle, Domino’s Pizza president and CEO. “Our mobile app users who are a part of this launch are truly helping set the foundation for the innovations of today, that will soon enough become the standards of tomorrow.”
The platform, in partnership with Nuance, will redefine technology convenience – and puts Domino’s at the forefront of an intuitive ordering method that is a true first within both traditional and e-commerce retail.
With the updated app rolling out today, you’ll also be able to browse menus, coupons and navigate through the app using your voice. The feature rolls out in beta today and is available in the updated Domino’s Pizza app for iOS now.
Using our voice to control computers has never really taken off. For many of us, using voice recognition technology wasn’t even a consideration until features like dictation and Siri arrived on our iPhones and iPads. There’s good reason too: the voice recognition features built into our devices have always had the reputation of being half-baked. They simply aren’t accurate and consistent enough to replace our tried and trusted mouse and keyboard or touchscreen. While half decent dictation features come with every Mac (and are powered by Nuance’s technology), the voice recognition features you get with latest version of Nuance’s Dragon Dictate for Mac go well beyond simply dictating speech to text. Expand Expanding Close
Nuance has just announced the next major version of its Mac dictation software, Dragon Dictate 4. The new version improves recognition accuracy as well as several new features, including the ability to machine transcribe from a pre-recorded audio file. You no longer have to be recording a voice live to get transcription.
We’ve had a quick play with the software and the accuracy is almost scary good compared to older versions of the software. Speaking in a normal voice gives you almost 100% accuracy and even mumbling seems to work. While Mavericks uses the same Nuance speech engine, Dictate 4 has a better interface for transcription and tons of extra features as outlined in the videos above and below.
Dragon Dictate software has also been updated for modern system architectures — it is a 64-bit app now. This results in better performance and better memory management over its predecessors. The company says it has drastically reduced latency when interpreting speech.
The Google Now-like voice recognition features introduced to the Google Search for iOS app last month have been getting a lot of attention. Maps might not be the only area Apple cannot compete with Google. As highlighted in a video comparison we posted earlier this week, Google’s voice search feature has Siri beat. And many users are taking note. Today, AppAdvice pointed us to a new Jailbreak tweak called “NowNow” that allows you to call up Google voice search (from within the Google Search iOS app) by holding down the Home button—just like Siri. It appears you can also select alternate methods to invoke the feature, so you should be able to continue to use both if want. The tweak is available via the BigBoss repository now for free.
There are fewer options for speech recognition these days, and now there are even fewer with Nuance announcing they acquired Vlingo for an undisclosed figure. Following multiple lawsuits related to patent infringement, the two companies apparently came to what CEO of Vlingo Dave Grannan called “a good outcome.” Grannan elaborated in a prepared statement (via AllThingsD):
Vlingo and Nuance have long shared a similar vision for the power and global proliferation of mobile voice and language understanding. As a result of our complementary research and development efforts, our companies are stronger together than alone. Our combined resources afford us the opportunity to better compete, and offer a powerful proposition to customers, partners and developers.
Vlingo is notably used in various voice-controlled Android apps, and it is viewed as competitors to Apple’s Siri built into the iPhone 4S. However, Siri, also used it prior to it being used by Apple, before switching to Nuance…
In an interview with 9to5Mac, Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky said Vlingo was originally used as the speech recognition component of Siri before switching to Nuance. He noted: “Theoretically, if a better speech recognition comes along (or Apple buys one), they could likely replace Nuance without too much trouble. ” The full quote is below.
9to5Mac: How important is Nuance speech recognition to the Siri technology? Expand Expanding Close
Curious to see how Windows Phone feels, but don’t have a device around to do so? Us neither. But Microsoft has just released a new HTML 5 website that allows iPhone and Android users to get a taste of the Windows Phone 7 (Mango 7.5) operating system. The trial requires no downloads or registration, and you can try it out by just going to the webpage http://aka.ms/wpdemo on your mobile device.
While it doesn’t use any of the data on your phone like your contacts, the demo does give you a pretty comprehensive look at all of Windows Phone’s features. Microsoft uses a blue dot to guide you around the operating system, and obviously some features like voice recognition just don’t work in the browser. Drat, that’s something we really wanted to try.
Will this draw users over to the Windows Phone platform? Probably not, but it’s always cool to see what the competition is up to.
Apple’s purchase of Siri in early 2010 and their partnership with Nuance in 2011 has many hoping that Apple has something like speech-to-text or voice-navigation up its sleeve for iOS 5. One of the remaining advantages of Android over iOS is its system-wide Voice Actions technology.
Unfortunately, WWDC and the iOS 5 announcement came and went and nothing related to voice-navigation had been announced. Even so, the Apple-Nuance partnership has been confirmed by way of Nuance voices in Apple’s OS X Lion and Nuance speech-to-text functionality that is referenced in Apple’s internal settings modules.
But that doesn’t mean Apple isn’t hard at work at this very moment trying to cram some native OS level voice recognition technology into iOS 5 before launch.
Coupled with Nuance speech-to-text, Apple appears to be planning to take the fruit of their Siri purchase and fully integrate it into this fall’s release of iOS 5. Because these new features have yet to appear in iOS 5 on the iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS, Apple might be saving these new features as an iPhone 5 exclusive. This would be akin to Apple’s decision to make Voice Control and video recording exclusive features to the iPhone 3GS, even though they could technically function on earlier models of the iPhone. As you can see in Siri’s promotional video above, the company advertises itself as “your virtual personal assistant.”
As you can see in the screenshot above from an Apple iPhone test unit, Apple is currently developing and testing a new iOS feature called “Assistant.” This screenshot, from a reliable source, is corroborated with our own SDK findings (below). The source did warn, though, that development is not yet completed – and just went into testing – and may not even be finished by the time the next iPhone ships.
