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Speech! Speech! Is Voice Recognition Ready for Prime Time?

Improved speech recognition technology debuts at Demo 98 trade show

By Ephraim Schwartz, PCWorld   

Dragon Systems%squot continuous speech recognition application, Naturally Speaking, was given third place by Demo 98 attendees as the most important product of the year. None of the other four speech-related companies placed.

Dragon used the Demo 98 event to announce agreements with Corel and Actioneer to incorporate the continuous speech recognition product into both companies%squot products.

Corel will include Naturally Speaking in all future versions of WordPerfect Suite 8 and will upgrade Suite users later this year. WordPerfect users will be able to dictate nonstop into the word processor. During the demonstration, the speaker spoke in a natural voice at an extremely rapid pace without error. The program also lets users edit and format documents via voice control.

Actioneer will also incorporate voice control and speech recognition into the Action Messenger. This messaging product allows users to bring up a message pad, leave a note, and direct its distribution and placement, including sending it as an e-mail, in other programs such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, and PalmPilot Desktop.

IBM Research Division demonstrated two forthcoming speech technologies using the voice technology incorporated into its ViaVoice products. One demonstration showed how an airline reservations package could be built that would understand a user%squots intentions even if they were not completely expressed.

In the example, the demonstrator said, %dquotI would like to make a reservation from San Francisco to Los Angeles for today around 3 p.m.%dquot The program understood the directive and offered a number of flight choices. When the demonstrator said, %dquotI want to return on Friday,%dquot the program understood that the two cities in question were reversed on the return flight and that Friday meant the following Friday.

Lernout & Hauspie debuted a translation program, Coronado, that can search Web sites in multiple languages and return a summary to the inquirer in a selected language. The program also ranks responses according to user-defined parameters and files them in folders. Coronado will go into beta testing in the second quarter.

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