Google has built a new technology to power its voice search, which the company says will make it even faster and more accurate. The new technology uses Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) and sequence discriminative training techniques. In 2012, Google switched from Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), which allowed the company to better assess which sound a user was producing at that time, and delivered an increased speech recognition accuracy.
Our improved acoustic models rely on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). RNNs have feedback loops in their topology, allowing them to model temporal dependencies: when the user speaks /u/ in the previous example, their articulatory apparatus is coming from a /j/ sound and from an /m/ sound before. Try saying it out loud - "museum" - it flows very naturally in one breath, and RNNs can capture that. The type of RNN used here is a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) RNN which, through memory cells and a sophisticated gating mechanism, memorizes information better than other RNNs. Adopting such models already improved the quality of our recognizer significantly.
The change in technology has been made by Google, and is now being used to power voice searches in the Google app on both iOS and Android, as well as dictation on Android devices.
Source: Google Research Blog
Reader comments
Google updates technology behind voice search to make it faster and more accurate
I've noticed "OK Google" voice recognition has gotten much, much less accurate over the past few days. Is the change you're reporting a back-end thing, or an app update?
It's very much on the server side, although I'm sure the newer versions of the app have been reconfigured to interface with it better.
Wubba lubba dub dub!
I've noticed this over the last couple of weeks, too.
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Ok Google, transit time to Narnia.
The accuracy of Google Now is phenomenal. The voice recognition is much better than Cortana in that category. I never had the need to repeat certain words or phrases with GN. I still like Cortana but GN got the V Recognition down sometimes perfect.
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I've actually had the opposite experience. I have found Cortana to be more accurate granted I haven't tried Cortana's voice recognition on Android yet.
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So will it improve its wits then? :P We need humor! And being able to change the voice. No offense to the Google Lady, but the geek in me wants HAL talking back.
HAL would be awesome :D
Or Kit. In either case, male voice.
I'll take Jarvis or Amanda Pays. :)
Oh, Jarvis! Forgot about that! Male + British. Not bad. Or the girl from the Hive in Resident Evil. So many cool computer voices out there. Still, I'd be happy with male/female choices, maybe regional accents on top of that. Pitch, speed variables maybe?
I don't like the sound of most of this... But if we're choosing voices for Google that sound like they want to kill us, I would choose GLaDOS!
Wubba lubba dub dub!
I wish it looked like a holographic face talking back to us!!
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I'm hoping for Jarvis!
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I wouldn't mind changing the voice once in awhile from female to male but don't care about any humor from the app. I don't like machines acting like humans by being funny - its a machine act like it please.
Google= greatness
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They need to update something with the voice system because it is terrible!! I find it almost completely useless.
if google voice system is terrible then there is nothing out there which is better
If this helps at all with the horrible voice recognition on my Nexus Player I'm all for it.
The Google app worked so well until the latest update. It's quirky to say the least. I am sure that it will be fixed soon as it's worked so well up until now.
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I've found that retraining the "Hey google" voice model has helped for me. If you actually use that feature, that is. Maybe my case is anecdotal.
Not sure if this is proven already, is Google now voice recognition better then Siri?
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I imagine that would be a very subjective call. Since you have an android device, what's the difference? You can't use Siri anyway, so why bother with the comparison? For you, Google now would have to be better.
My favorite is when it auto corrects for bad grammar. It rearranges the text to make sense. Very funny and in your face.
Still doesn't correct ebonics though.
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What a pile of rubbish
I often end.up writing my search because it not only gets it wrong but so so wrong
I strongly agree improvement of voice recognition . But, ... - what about simple translation English - Polish and vice versa. I didn't try other Slavic languages , yet , ... but mentioned translation is terrible.