News - The latest Chrome browser includes speech recognition API

[HEXUS]

Google is also planning to implement the highlighting of “noisy tabs”.

Read more.

[kingpotnoodle]

I love the little features like the sound icon, but talking to my browser whilst it sounds great is probably just one of those "ooh shiny" features nobody ever uses. I've tried the Android voice input feature (and Google Now) and it works a charm, apparently my mildly posh Queen's English voice is well suited... But, I do 99% of texts, emails or other input in public places and I don't want the world to know what I'm texting the mrs! Same at home, does she really want me sitting on the sofa chatting to Chrome whilst she's watching Mr Selfridge... I'll end up visiting "www dot hexus dot will you shut up I'm watching this".

[Kumagoro]

The only place I can see me using voice recognition is in a car.

[crossy]

I do 99% of texts, emails or other input in public places and I don't want the world to know what I'm texting the mrs! Same at home, does she really want me sitting on the sofa chatting to Chrome whilst she's watching Mr Selfridge... I'll end up visiting "www dot hexus dot will you shut up I'm watching this".

That last bit made me smile - nice to know I'm not the only one...

Speech dictation leaves me a bit cold - yes I know it works pretty well these days, but to my mind you still need a quiet location. Useless in the open plan cubes that predominate. On the other hand speech command strikes me as useful - the command set is limited and should be possible to get with high accuracy. What I have issues with is that surely with Chrome you'll be doing predominantly dictation - and dictation of non-words too. So any system that's expecting letter-style English is going to have issues with "www dot hexus dot net", and I suspect you'll spend a long time spelling out stuff like xkcd, and stopping it putting in a space in "theregister".

The "noisy tabs" stuff sounds like a good idea - but it's only going to achieve full usefulness if you can not only identify that loud advert, but also zap it. Not something - based on current actions - that Google will want to let users do.

[TheAnimus]

"Google Search: House prices in putney"

Now Searching for... Hardcore Pornography

"Incorrect"

Input invalidated, please state command clearly

"Google Search: House prices in putney"

Now Searching for... Hardcore Pornography

"Incorrect"

Input invalidated, please remember voice is trained by your previous inputs

"F*** you"

I've been trying to help you with that


The possabilities of a turing bot as a search helper and this API are endless