Apple's iOS 15.4 software adds Dutch as a new Siri language option for HomePod voice recognition in the Netherlands, allowing multiple people to request personal information from Siri without invading the privacy of others.
Voice Recognition
HomePod software 15.3 extends Siri multiuser support to additional countries
Updating your Apple wireless speaker to software version 15.3 will let you set up HomePod multiuser with Siri voice recognition in additional countries and languages.
HomePod mini will soon recognize multiple voices everywhere the smart speaker is sold
HomePod mini's voice recognition and support for multiple users are soon expanding to all of the markets where the Siri-powered smart speaker is available, Apple has confirmed.
Bloomberg: thousands of Amazon employees are listening to Echo voice recordings
Amazon has thousands of employees listen to Echo audio clips as part of improving Alexa's machine learning so that the personal assistant could better respond to voice commands.
How to create an Alexa Voice Profile on Amazon Echo speaker
While you might use Alexa and your Amazon Echo speaker to do things like shopping, listening to music, or checking your calendar, you probably don’t think about the effect of your voice. Your speaker is smart enough to recognize your voice in order to personalize your experience.
For instance, setting up a Voice Profile can help with announcing messages only sent to you, customized music playback, and skipping news stories you’ve already heard.
If you haven’t taken the time to set this up, our tutorial will walk you through it. Here’s how to create an Alexa Voice Profile on Amazon Echo speaker.
Amazon Alexa can now recognize different voices
Amazon yesterday released an update which lets its digital assistant Alexa tell different voices apart, a feature that will appeal to crowded households with multiple Echo speakers.
Turn iMessage, WhatsApp, and Line voice messages into text with Textify
Sending your friends voice recordings on messenger platforms such as iMessage, WhatsApp or Threema is surely not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s hard to overlook its rising popularity in certain circles. Be it for faster communications or text weariness amongst younger people, voice messages are rife in chats today and that is despite the one clear downside they have: unlike texts, they are not very discreet, which makes them basically unobtainable in a host of potential situations.
Understanding the (circumstantial) issues with voice messages, Apple were the first to offer voicemail transcriptions in iOS 10 and now Textify joins the cause to bring a similar service to an even wider audience. The speech recognition app provides spoken word-to-text transcriptions for all your favorite messenger platforms including iMessage, WhatsApp, Threema, and Line. And suffice it to say that it wouldn’t be on iDB if it was not surprisingly powerful at that. Here’s how it works.
How Apple’s advanced self-learning technologies could make Siri a lot smarter
The assistant wars are in full swing, with Google Assistant and Viv entering the fray and existing players such as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Hound and Google's Now all stepping up fight for consumers' hearts and minds.
Apple's rumored Amazon Echo competitor, which VentureBeat believes is a next-gen Apple TV, could blow all the assistants out of the water when it comes to deciphering complex natural language queries.
And powering it—VocalIQ, a sophisticate technology Apple acquired back in October 2015. Tech Insider provided an in-depth overview of how VocalIQ could make Siri a lot smarter than it is today.
How to enable Enhanced Dictation in OS X for streaming speech-to-text with live feedback
OS X includes a nifty Dictation feature which allows you to control your Mac and apps with your voice. You can use “speakable items”, basically a set of spoken commands, to open apps, choose menu items, email contacts and convert whole spoken sentences to text, wherever you can type text.
This is much like iOS’s Dictation feature as both iOS and OS X use the same Nuance-powered technology that turns speech to text. iOS devices have limited computing power so the Dictation feature on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad requires network connectivity in iOS 7 (iOS 8 supports streaming voice recognition and 22 new languages).
On the Mac, computing resources like CPU power, battery life and RAM are not of paramount importance as on mobile, Therefore, OS X Mavericks provides a new Enhanced Dictation feature which converts your words to text without utilizing Apple’s servers.
In other words, server-based Dictation lets you dictate without an active Internet connection. Because voice recognition processing runs locally on your Mac, text appears instantly as you speak. That is: continuos, streaming dictation with live feedback is made possible.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to turn on Enhanced Dictation in OS X and take advantage of speech-to-text, even when you're off the grid...
GoogolPlex will ‘unleash the power of Siri’ with Nest, Philips Hue, Spotify commands
Siri within iOS 7 can be limited sometimes, thanks to Apple's "walled garden", but a new tool called GoogolPlex wants to change that by opening the voice assistant to new commands.
Self described as the "App Store for Siri", GoogolPlex opens Siri to work with Spotify, Philips Hue, the Nest Thermostat and more, just by an iOS user changing a few proxy settings...
Facebook acquires speech recognition firm Mobile Technologies
Facebook has announced this afternoon that it has acquired Mobile Technologies, a private company that develops speech recognition and machine translation technology. The move reiterates the social network's commitment to its mobile strategy.
Honestly, I hadn't heard of the company before today. But some quick digging shows that Mobile Technologies is behind the popular Jibbigo translation app, which the developers claim is the "world’s first" online/offline speech-to-speech translator...
CEO confirms Siri uses Nuance voice recognition tech
In the months leading up to 2011's WWDC event, there were numerous reports that Apple would announce a major partnership with voice recognition giant Nuance. Obviously, the gossip never materialized, and Apple didn't even end up unveiling Siri until that fall.
But despite the fact that no one has ever come out and said it, Nuance has long been given credit for powering Siri's speech recognition capabilities. And today, the company's CEO Paul Ricci confirmed the theory while speaking at AllThingsD's D11 conference...