Something More Annoying Than The Governator

Posted in: Electronic Recording

So here’s a question for you.  What’s more annoying than California’s current governor?  How about voice recognition software?  According to columnists Ian Thomson and Shaun Nichols of PC Authority voice recognition was so annoying that it made the number 2 spot in their Top 10 Annoying Technologies list.  So what did they find so annoying about voice recognition?

Shaun Nichols: What starts with “account” and ends with “go **** yourself”? That’s right, a call to your bank’s automated call system. Voice recognition was designed to be a replacement to the old “press one for…” system which was highly irritating in its own right.

The problem was that most systems don’t really account for things like accents or different pronunciations, meaning that unless you talk like the guy from movie phone, you’re in trouble. If you’re calling a system in a foreign country it becomes almost comedic (listening to my former Dutch boss check airline reservations was a favorite pastime.)

Only now are prototype voice recognition systems that account for these things being developed, meaning we should have at least a few more years of having to repeat the word “operator” over and over again.

Iain Thomson: When the first voice recognition systems for the PC came out I was sold instantly, it’s what I’d always wanted. No more aching fingertips from hammering a keyboard and you’d be able to tell the computer what to do just like the movies.

Sadly the promise wasn’t fulfilled. The early software slowed your machine to a crawl, later systems weren’t much better and the software takes ages to get used to your voice. It also throws a strop and refuses to work if you get a cold. When I got a press release from Lernout & Hauspie claiming their system could be trained in a few minutes it got filed straight in the circular filing cabinet.

Things may have improved slightly nowadays but basic problems still remain. The software is incredibly poor at recognizing names and useless with companies. In the end you spend so much time editing documents you might as well have just typed it in right first time.

Comments are closed.