New York -- The day when computers accurately understand speech is inching ever closer.
Several companies are touting a HAL-like future at Internet World (sans the movie star computer's killer instinct, of course). One of the biggest announcements so far to come out of the Internet World show here is an alliance among Motorola, Visa, Nuance Comminucations, and others, to back a so-called V-commerce initiative. Though mainly still hype, the move will ultimately provide a common way for computers to retrieve and read voice technology.
Tip of the iceberg
Speech recognition companies are just now clearing the major accuracy hurdles that have kept the technology from becoming widely adopted, and the common language will allow companies to incorporate speech recognition into more applications, especially those for e-commerce.
It's just the tip of the iceberg, according General Magic, one of the members of the alliance. The company is demonstrating its new product, Portico, which lets users call in to retrieve voice and e-mail messages. A computerized voice reads the messages back and lets users enter items in their calendar -- all by using a phone.
The speech recognition software can be synchronized with desktop software such as Microsoft's Outlook and with devices such as the PalmPilot. The company has been signing up users to the service -- which costs as little as $US19.95 per month for 60 minutes -- and was rolled out in the summer. It's also distributed through partners such as cellular phone providers and made a big marketing push in recent weeks.
Dreams of Star Trek
Another speech recognition company, Lernout & Hauspie, eventually plans to add speech recognition to its new translation server software. Right now, iTranslator lets a company translate the text on its Web site in almost real-time to common languages including Spanish, German and French. The product was released Tuesday. In the future, the company foresees a future where people can speak into the computer and the software will translate the speech into text in another language.
That's not in the immediate future, however. "Everyone wants the Star Trek philosophy now, but that's still a few years away," company spokesman Richard Levine said.
|
'Everyone wants the Star Trek philosophy now, but that's still a few years away.' -- Richard Levine, Lernout & Hauspie spokesman.  |
The company also sells the technology to vertical markets, including the medical industry. Microsoft has invested $US45 million in the company and has said it will eventually add speech recognition to the OS. Levine said that will lead to a need for more speech applications that work with Microsoft's OS, a need L&H plans to fill.
