The Speech-to-Text system is built into almost every modern smartphone. The most convenient feature it provides is a voice search function on the Internet. Everyone knows that typing a search query using the touch screen and a small keyboard is not so easy. This is particularly difficult for the people with finger diseases.
Speech recognition technology comes as a perfect solution to solve the problem. To make a request to Google all you have to do is tap the microphone symbol and wait for the “say something” suggestion to appear on the screen. You should agree that this is much more convenient than using the virtual keyboard on your smartphone.
How voice recognition technology works
Human speech is a continuous stream of sound waves presented in analog format. This means that it functions without discretization into separate elements. Modern computers are digital devices, so the speech analyzer works according to a certain multi-step algorithm:
- Before a computer processor can start processing the data, a continuous stream of sound waves must be decomposed into digital data. A special “sampling” module is used for this purpose.
- To analyze the sample of the voice recorded on the smartphone presented to the server, a previously accumulated database of so called “phonemes” is used. In simple terms, a computer uses elementary units of human speech.
- By sequentially comparing a speech sample to a phoneme database, the computer program finds a match to specific letters and words.
- Next, the idiomatic language database is connected. Groups of words are matched to idioms, and the system eventually generates a sequential text from the phrase spoken by the voice.
This is a short description of the algorithm used to convert voice information into text.
Practical application of voice recognition system
Owners and drivers of cars with a built-in voice computer can control a variety of functions by means of speech. This is very convenient, especially when driving on highways with heavy traffic. There is no need to take your hand off the steering wheel to turn on the heater or the air conditioner, thus creating the risk of a traffic accident.
Passengers can activate and deactivate the audio player using voice recognition function, select tracks and adjust the volume and tone of the sound. Speech commands control the operation of the navigator.
Writers and journalists have made their work much easier by using the voice typing option in text editors. Studies show that the use of Speech-to-Text option can increase an author’s productivity almost twofold.
Computer programs trained with artificial intelligence do not make spelling errors, so the time to edit documents is significantly reduced. This is an extremely convenient feature!
Nowadays speech recognition is probably most widely used in advertising and marketing spheres. Just a couple of years ago advertising companies had to hire dozens or even hundreds of employees to make cold calls to potential clients. Today, artificial intelligence independently conducts a conversation with a client over the phone and is able to give relevant answers to questions using a prepared sales script.
The banking industry is also actively introducing customer identification using biometrics, and part of this is the analysis of a person’s voice. There are already banking terminals that dispense money to the client without requiring a plastic card. The depositor logs in with a control phrase spoken out loud.
