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Google Is Taking Spoken Questions
The New York Times is reporting that Google has added a voice interface to their iPhone search software. Expected to make its debut as early as Friday, users will be able to speak into their phone and ask any question they could type into Google's search engine. The audio will be digitized and results will be returned via the normal search interface. "Google is by no means the only company working toward more advanced speech recognition capabilities. So-called voice response technology is now routinely used in telephone answering systems and in other consumer services and products. These systems, however, often have trouble with the complexities of free-form language and usually offer only a limited range of responses to queries."
The response to popular Slashdotter question, "where can I get laid?":
404 - Page Not Found
this means ebonics is out of the question?
If I could get good voice transcription on my computer by installing Google Desktop, THAT would make it worthwhile.
Something for iPhone users? I could care less.
I've encountered a number of systems that take voice input, mainly banks. Total fail if I'm at work, sitting in a room full of computer fans. Outside, any traffic, river, plane or bird noise and it's no-go either. I hate these systems with a passion and try to avoid them where possible. I always complain to the people who decided to use these stupid input methods.
Let's hope Google doesn't try to publicly demonstrate this like Microsoft did for Vista Speech Recognition!
"Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all"
Huh?!
... it seems to translate every question into "My hovercraft is full of eels!"
That is all.
We're one step closer to the replicator.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
I remember that early on in the Google Android SDK releases there was mention of voice recognition, and I was sorry to see it go in the final release. Perhaps this means we'll soon see voice recognition re-introduced to Android?
Is there any possible way I could be more lazy?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"Uh, Japanese girls exchanging bodily fluids? Click."
Come on...It's not that obscure of a pop reference...I'm sure someone gets it...
"We will ask Dr. Know. There is nothing he doesn't." --A.I.
So, did you roll it out because you lost a bet or what?
Be kind of awkward sitting in your manager's office explaining that you weren't surfing pr0n, just telling your phone to fuck off.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Google has something called a "Phone Search" here. They provide a toll-free number, which you can call and feed it with queries and make it read out the results.
They even have an option to send a particular result via sms to your phone.
Its still in Google Labs though
Electronics are on a 50+ year run of continuously shrinking, but you can't do much more shrinking with our current user interface schemes. You could make an iPhone as thin as a credit card, but that's only a few "doublings" away from its current state, and then what? Making it smaller in either of the other two dimensions is just going to decrease its functionality.
But eyeglasses can have a heads up display. And in the magical world of tomorrow, maybe contact lenses can have a wireless interface and a high-resolution superimposed display. And of course there's wireless headphones. So those are potential conduits of information from machines to us, but how do we talk to the machines? If we're walking around, how do we dial the phone or ask for directions or tell the computer what YouTube clip we want to watch, if the heart of the thing can be the size of a penny?
I think it's going to be verbal. Short of the development of neural interface implants or that sort of thing, I think verbal's going to become a primary interface for mobile electronics. I think the chip that stores everything and wirelessly talks to the outside world and "makes it go" can be anywhere- wristwatch, glasses, tie clip, belt buckle. Whatever. But the thing's going to have to listen to you, so it can understand when you say "Show me the closest three book stores. Do any of them have a physical copy of Into The Nano Era, Moore's Law Beyond Planar Silicon?" Or "play my running playlist on random," or that sort of thing. Not strong AI, but good voice recognition coupled with really dramatically improved ability to parse and interpret commands from speech. I'm sure we'd need a couple of buttons or a knob or slider or such somewhere for things like volume that you just don't want to do with voice. But it strikes me that most of what people do on their iPhones, except for playing games, could be done quite well via voice, and then you don't need to lug around and pull out some physical gadget and stare at its screen and peck at it with your fingers.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Can you hear me now?
I actually like this.
As long as the speech-to-text is reasonably accurate, it will do what I want.
I hate driving and having to type something into google to figure out and address or phone number.
If i could say it, even if it was only close to accurate, it would be safer and save me some headache.
Now I just need an iPhone. LOL.
Representative, Representative, Representative ... Operator, Operator, Operator ... Help, Help, Help ... (hangup in disgust)
Hope google has better luck with this than others have.
Ron
Just curious, but why only support iPhone? Why not Nokia/WinMo/Blackberry - ie, the other 99% of cell phones out there with voice recognition capabilities? Why single out one phone?
I think they are letting the iPhone users alpha test for their beta which will be on the Android platform.
I would say that iPhone is the beta, but this is Google. Nothing makes it out of beta.
Skip the speech part and interface to the frontal lobes. Google can then spider the mind of the human race, and with the query interface we will have achieved the final fate of mankind - a hive mind.
The "Italian in Malta" joke comes to mind: http://9527.net/archives/2005/12/29/16/
so I will be able to keep my hands free...for other....things....
Monstar L
They introduce web-based voice search years ago. I remember trying it on their Labs site as far back as 2002.
You'd call an 800#, speak your query, and a results page on your browser woudl refresh automatically w/ the results.
Google's MO is all due dilligence. Seems like they waited for this tech to mature before they rolled it out.
Since it's only application is on the iPhone...
Remember the days when you sat in your cellar, hacking away at your code by the melancholy light of your 15-inch monitor? Your fingers tapping each key in a... rough, but wonderfully familar way.
What speech recognition creates is a world where you can go jogging while hacking away verbally! Oo"
Yes, its only google now, but just wait until we have voice-controlled emacs!
Sentimental programmers unite to preserve your traditional tools!
If I'm not mistaken, Google limits your queries to 10 words. What limit will it impose to your deciphered speech? Or will we be on the street speaking some alien language to get our query under the word limit?
Has it been long enough to forget Ask Jeeves yet?
http://mobile.yahoo.com/onesearch/voice
Anyone care?
Yeah, didn't think so.
chacha.com
Yes, the old troll-bait live chat-based search engine has shut off the chat and is now doing exactly what Google is now trying to do.
This whole thing falls in the "it's challenging, but we think we can get to it, with difficulty, even if once we get there no-one will actually want to use that when the novelty effect will have (quickly) worn off" category.
Who wants to use voice recognition, and for what? Who wants to see the person they're talking to on the phone on a screen? Who wants to turn the lights on by clapping their hands? And so on..
You just got troll'd!
Yet the iphone still lacks a decent voice dialer. The free solutions offered are hardly accurate, yet Google turns around and offers a open speech engine that doesn't even have to scour a pre-built list of contacts to figure out what your saying. Maybe Google can teach Apple how to create a good voice dialer?
I've been waiting for Google to come out with this.
This is the first step to true and accurate voice recognition and translation:
1) Google user speaks search string into phone.
2) Google gets it wrong, user corrects Google
3) Multiply by millions of searches daily with constant correction and feedback from users
4) Perfect voice rec, major profit
There will be a few issues with voice recognition to begin with but as it gets better and more people use the service and add to the database with their corrections and add to the pool of variable accents etc the accuracy will be perfected at an exponential rate.
A similar concept could apply to translations. Once voice recognition is perfected and becomes the primary search input of choice then more people will be able to use their phones as direct voice to voice translators. Obvious translation mistakes will become apparent through mass use. At every turn users could flag apparent mistranslations and through the help of the Google Borg accurate translations would evolve. Much the same way that Wikipedia pages tend to accuracy over time even with the input of a subset of "disruptive" users.
My 2 cents.
ogglelog
Am I the only one wondering why this was done for the iPhone instead of the gPhone? I guess it was the same brilliant mind who decided to make chrome for windows first instead of linux and mac.
I say things which affects my Karma negatively. (and I don't care) For instance; All religion is false.
I know what I'm gonna try:
"Hello, Google. My name is Doctor Chandra. I'd like to teach you to sing a song. It goes like this: 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage. I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle built for two.' "
If it replies that it is an "H A L Niner-Triple-Zero", I am going to run screaming, renounce all computers and the Internet, and live a quiet life as a monk somewhere very very hard to reach.
(grin)
David Small
I already have this on my Samsung Instinct. It uses Live Search though. Whats new with this? Just because Google did it? You people are such google suck-ups..
Interestingly enough, I've been able to do this in Live Search on my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone for months, now, and it works surprisingly well for Microsoft software. Glad Google and iPhone are finally joining the party.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
But it works by having the phone do speech recognition while being held at arms length. That way you can have multi-modal communication and it not simply speech replacing pointing, but having them work together, using each modality for what it's good for. Here's a link to an article: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/att-developing.html The idea of using the phones accelerometer is a great idea. In AT&T's demo you need to "click to talk", which makes sense for their design, but the accelerometer idea is pretty nifty if you just have speech responses. Using the display is good for many things though, e.g. for maps, long lists. I'm thinking it could be a pain to have to hold the phone up to your ear over and over: hold it up to your ear, speak, look at the display, (speak again if something was misrecognized), (possibly click something), hold it up to hor ear, speak, look at the display, etc. -- Why procrastinate now when you could procrastinate tomorrow.
1 - Look for iPhone user on the street
2 - Yell "Big Boobs" into their phone while passing
3 - ???
4 - Profit!!!
People don't do research on an iphone. They do it on their desktop or notebook or UMPC. I found some voice recognition software named Tazti speech recognition that actually is a free download and performs voice searches of Google, Yahoo, MSN, Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay and many other websites. It also lets me log into and navigate Facebook and Myspace by talking to my PC. It really works well.
Here's their youtube demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1tt_aeIAM8
tazti is a free download from http://www.tazti.com/
...and so far it keeps returning women willing to 'stock my clock' or 'sink my duck'.
whereas on a phone it's more convenient to speak your commands
You're missing the point of my message. This is not about voice commands, which I agree are daft: I've got a phone with voice command support and it's a LOT more convenient to hit "5" than to say "delete" and have it respond with "saved". This is about voice transcription. Completely different problem space.