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Google Releases Chrome 25 With Voice Recognition Support

Posted by timothy on from the say-what-you-mean dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google on Thursday released Chrome version 25 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. While Chrome 24 was largely a stability release, Chrome 25 is all about features, including voice recognition support via the newly added Web Speech API and the blocking of silent extension installation. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome." But if you're more interested in the growing raft of Google-branded hardware than running Google OSes, some good news (via Liliputing) about the newly released Pixel: Bill Richardson of Google posted on Thursday that the Pixel can boot Linux Mint, and explained how users can follow his example, by taking advantage of new support for a user-provided bootloader.

16 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Clever! by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Funny

    I see what you did there, this is social engineering. Who is going to shout at their monitor "Natalie Portman grits petrified porn"?

    Fappist: "Natalie Portman grits petrified porn"
                Chrome: "Madly norman sits petrified corn"
                Fappist: "NATALIE PORTMAN GRITS PETRIFIED PORN"
                Chrome: "Actually foreman knits electrified morn"
                FAPPIST: "GRRRRR! NATALIE PORTMAN GRITS PETRIFIED PORN!!!!"
               

    1. Re:Clever! by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · · Score: 2, Funny

      There are worse sources for inspiration. "I see you're trying to 'die you fucking piece of shit,' would you like help with that?"

  2. And STILL No 64 Bit by joelleo · · Score: 2

    One of these days, I'll have a supported version of Chrome which can address more than 4GB of memory in my !Linux boxen...

    --
    "In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
    1. Re:And STILL No 64 Bit by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Aside from being '64 bit clean', why would you care about RAM?

      Doesn't each Chrome tab run in a separate process, i.e. say each tab addresses 2GB, if you're have 8 tabs open you're maxing out your 16GB workstation??

      Running a 32bit browser on a 64bit OS can be a blessing - Running Chrome on Windows means I don't have to disable (for security reasons) the 64bit Java Plugin the JDK installs.

  3. voice recognition is a bad joke by KiloByte · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It looks like they're making a marketing mistake: they make it sound as if they added recognition of arbitrary text.

    There are only two things voice recognition is useful for:
    * taking a small number of distinct commands
    * producing nonsense poetry that keeps rhythm and rhyme with input voice

    A small corpus of words can be distinguished between pretty easily -- as long as no two are similar to each other. In a real language, with many thousands of words, even a human has a hard time without understanding the subject matter and filling the gaps from context. In fact, what you hear is mostly gaps -- just try to transcribe a series of random words with any real speed. Or, for another example: in a written text, randomly permute all letters except the first and last in every word -- it will still be pretty understandable if you recognize its sense or not at all if you don't. And recognizing the sense is an AI-hard task.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    1. Re:voice recognition is a bad joke by Albanach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are only two things voice recognition is useful for:
      * taking a small number of distinct commands
      * producing nonsense poetry that keeps rhythm and rhyme with input voice

      That's funny, I used voice control of my Nexus 4 yesterday evening to open the email application, pick the correct contact and then dictate an email along the lines of:

      Hi _name_,

      I've just left work. I'll be home in about ten minutes.

      See you then,

      _my name_

      That certainly seems to be more than a small number of commands. Okay, I'm not going to dictate War and Peace, but it's certainly functional.

    2. Re:voice recognition is a bad joke by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      Not sure if you're joking or you actually managed to get some text through, but my experience with Every. Single. Recognition. Program. is same as the Frist Psot on this very article. And it's not just me: when some version of ViaVoice came out with much hype, I and a bunch of friends wasted a good part of a day trying to get a single sentence intact. With no luck -- even getting a single word through was a cause for celebration.

      Things have improved since then but not by much.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:voice recognition is a bad joke by Zemran · · Score: 2

      http://youtu.be/a5Wuwi9ZKxE

      --
      I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
  4. Re:Where is voice recognition being done by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The proposed API itself is agnostic, it just provides a way for a page to ask for mic access and a 'plz speech-to-text-this-audio' mechanism.

    Google's implementation, unshockingly enough, phones right back home to the mothership for speech recognition services. I would assume that(if this proposal makes it out of the cradle) implementations will vary: Google will phone home, Apple will 'siri' home, Microsoft might be awfully tempted to phone home on consumer SKUs, but not on enterprise ones; copies of Dragon NaturallySpeaking will probably include a browser plugin that brings your existing recognition training over to web text-to-speech, etc.

  5. Re:How do you by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's explained in this video

  6. Re:Does it have decent ad blocking yet? by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Funny

    Since Google is an ad company, you are going to sleep for a looong time dude.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  7. speech recognition. by ouachiski · · Score: 2

    I'm 31 and I am the current generation of consumerists...I can type faster than I can talk (I am special because I was taught to type when I was 7). I was in high school before computers where common. kids now have been typing as long as they have been writing. I don't see speech recognition as being to terribly important, but it does have its use cases.

    --
    sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
  8. Re:Does it have decent ad blocking yet? by ctid · · Score: 2

    What is wrong with a third-party ad-blocking extension?

    --
    Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
  9. Re:Does it have decent ad blocking yet? by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

    https://www.google.com/search?q=adblock+chrome
    https://www.google.com/search?q=cross+domain+request+filter
    https://www.google.com/search?q=notscripts

    Youre welcome. Dont let that stop you from trotting that out every few releases, even tho these have existed for, oh, a few years now.

  10. Re:Does it have decent ad blocking yet? by Gavagai80 · · Score: 2

    I prefer Chrome's adblock to Firefox's. What's the problem?

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  11. Re:Soo innovative, only 10 years after Opera! by I-am-a-Banana · · Score: 2

    That was what my thoughts were... Why does everyone wet themselves like a puppy with a new chew toy when Google and Apple announce "something new and innovative" when it has been on the market by other companies for so long already?!? Weird.....