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Look Out, Nuance: Apple's Office Near MIT Is Stocking Up With Speech-Tech Talent
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's had a small, very secretive office in Cambridge, MA for a few months now. And we finally know what they're doing: Building a team that works on speech technology for Siri. Sure, it's interesting for Apple to have a remote engineering team. And hiring from MIT is a no-brainer. But here's why this is a bigger deal: Apple has always relied on Nuance, a Boston-area company, for the speech-recognition technology behind Siri. By branching out with its own speech team — stocked with former Nuance scientists, no less — Apple could very well be signaling a move away from relying on Nuance for this core technology. And the speech wars are just heating up: Microsoft and Amazon both have speech engineering offices in the Boston area too."
And the speech wars are just heating up: Microsoft and Amazon both have speech engineering offices in the Boston area too.
"Siri, wheah's a wicked good place to pahk neah the Gahden?"
And here's my favorite.
"Siri, I'm bleeding really bad, can you call me an ambulance?"
"From now on, I'll call you 'An Ambulance'. OK?"
(This was apparently changed in one of the updates.)
This may be speech recognition, but it isn't any sort of content recognition. It's just pattern matching, and only those patterns which the coders have anticipated.