Voice recognition will bridge the gap between man and machine
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I have never been a big fan of using voice recognition on my phone mostly because “Siri” could not understand my accent! But in the last year, it seems like siri has got a lot more intelligent and has a sense of humor. Voice activated personal assistants are here in the form of alexa, siri and ok google. Amazon had the best holiday sales season during Christmas 2016 and sold millions of Amazon Echo.
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A voice activated assistant is only the first step towards changing the way we interact with our surroundings. Today, the technology is still a finite set of command set much like we would teach our pet to sit, stand and roll over (okay, maybe Echo can do a little bit more!).
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Advanced voice technology will soon be ubiquitous and we will be able to do natural conversation with our smart phone. In the very near future, we will have natural spoken conversations with our smart phone. Siri will elevate from being an assistant to being a friend, philosopher and guide. Now extend this to a connected world with millions of devices around us. Soon we will be talking to our appliances – telling the dishwasher to turn on, the fridge to re-order milk, the coffee machine to brew stronger coffee.
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Voice technology can make powerful contributions to society especially where hands free technology is needed in hospitals and care centres. If a voice activated device can call 911, it could save a life! VocalID, a company based in Massachusetts, is a voice company that is bringing speaking machines to life by creating unique vocal persona for any device that turns text into speech.The real excitement in voice recognition is when its combined with machine learning. Your smart phone will listen and learn and harness that information to “read your mind”. Soon the connected household and workplace will begin to predict your actions and prepare itself in advance.
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I wait for the day when – your favourite coffee, your travel plans, your style guide, your routine is prepared by itself without your inputs at all.