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Voice recognition

Just a note on the myths and realities of voice recognition ...

The science of voice recognition has been developed by software companies over the past ten years, and as the power of computers has increased exponentially over the same period, the Holy Grail of voice recognition has always been tantalisingly just over the horizon. But as every hill-walker knows, there’s always another summit to climb just over the horizon.

Voice recognition at the professional and consumer level is simply not developed enough to type our own voice accurately, never mind the voices of uniquely different strangers. There are products like Dragon’s Naturally Speaking or IBM’s ViaVoice which can do a reasonable job of typing a voice the software has been trained to recognise. With these products, the user must read passages of Alice in Wonderland et al aloud, so the program can work out our individual voice pattern. This training process takes 10-30 minutes, and even then the program is imperfect in recognising words. You have to review the results and make corrections.

There is simply no way that any software we have come across* can even begin to recognise the voices from your recordings. Voices which are as different as a male Welsh miner, a female Norfolk farm worker, a Scots office worker, or a London cabbie.

It is entirely possible that our security services have advanced, powerful software which does just that, but it will be years until it is widely available.

About 15 years in our estimation. Until then we have to type, and the easiest way to type recorded speech is with one of our foot pedals!

* if you know of any software which does this, PLEASE get in touch. €500 to anyone who has a program to accurately and reliably transcribe recorded speech of any interviewee, without training, at a reasonable cost.

This is a genuine offer, which may be withdrawn at any time, and our decision about whether any software meets these criteria or not is final.  Email us

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