QOTW: How often do you use speech recognition?

[failquail]

"How often do you use speech recognition?"
Never if at all possible.

I'm a tech enthusiast, but i've always hated voice recognition :/ My worst nightmare was back when the occasional company attempted to replace telephone numpad-tone automated systems with voice-activated ones.

Probably related to social anxiety though, i dislike using phones in general. But somehow talking to machines was worse than people, and that seems to have stuck.

[voxstream]

Never, I don't trust it and what's the point if I have to push a button to activate it.
A utopian dream that seems more trouble than it's worth, especially with the lack of privacy these days.

[abirawlinson]

I use it all the time use it on phone and I have kniect and xbox one set up as my main media box with virgin media telling xbox to watch a channel is great fun and the main reason I got my xbox

[ET3D]

I often try to use speech recognition with my wife and kids, but they rarely do what I tell them. So my conclusion is that the technology still has a long way to go.

[crossy]

This might surprise some, but I actually use it LESS than I used to. At the present it's limited to purely the odd "Ok Google" when the mood takes me. By the way Dareos, I'm the only person in the household that can consistently use Google Now, it seems to have a real problem with the "educated-Fifer" brogue that my wife and kids use, but has no problem with my Sue Pollard style Nottingham twang.

Anyway, in the past I've been a sometimes-avid trier of these systems - L&H, IBM, Dragon, etc. And I've got to say that the Dragon system has consistently impressed. However, I tend to do a lot of technical documents for which, being honest, it's not exactly satisfactory. One aspect I found though, is that a good recog system actually produced better docs, maybe because having to speak it out loud made it less likely to end up with poorly structured text.

What's more use to me is not voice dictation, but voice command. In the past these systems have been touted as a "throw away your keyboard", which they never were - but used as an adjoint to a keyboard/mouse they're actually capable of increasing your "fluidity".

Actually, there's something I'd quite like to see in Windows 11 - some standard voice recog API so that applications could easily/quickly could be voice-command-enabled. With even basic PC's being so powerful these days, being able to multitask like that (voice command for some apps while keyboarding for another at the same time ) would be useful.

What would make me a "definite" for Windows10 though would be if I could do (while sitting in Word):
Cortana ... launch calculator, 7.682 squared times 3.14 equals, copy, switch to word, paste text, close calculator without having to do any keystrokes.

[tonyd223]

All the time - I drive a lot (90 mile per day commute), but I use it more and more. Ok Google... I find it generally quite accurate.

[Salazaar]

I use voice activated bluetooth in my car but not for anything else.

[Ttaskmaster]

Played with it in general use - Found it to work well, but far slower than quickly pressing a button for most things.

Have used it with Voice Attack for Elite Dangerous and a few other things - It's very cool, but still gimmicky.

I don't see myself using it on any serious basis until the computer can properly talk back to me and have a conversation, as per Star Trek.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

When I try to look like one of the cool kids in the street but usually end up looking like some weirdo shouting at their phone.

[Smudger]

I use it to call my wife from the car, via bluetooth. If I press the button on the bluetooth thingy to activate the voice command, then talk, it seems to have trouble picking up what I say. If I just shout my Motox X opening command, it does it via the phone and picks out the right number straight away, then transfers audio to the bluetooth. Strange.

[shaithis]

I use it more than I thought I would, really need to get in the habit of using it more though now that the accuracy has increased a lot.

I tried using Siri when I had an iphone 5 for work, it NEVER worked for me. It normally went along the lines of:
Q "What's the capital of Argentina?"
A "Calling Steve..."

It put me off for a long time but I recently tried the google voice and it's been completely correct so far....

[Denis_iii]

I use Cortana daily via voice commands for setting reminders.
Several times a week for searches and queries and calendar events and calling and reading SMS's.

What drives me up the f'ing wall is Cortana only works in portrait mode so when browsing the web in portrait I now go to google webpage for searches rather then use Cortana so I don't have to keep flipping the phone from landscape to portrait.

[Saracen]

From many of the posts in this thread, I wonder where, and indeed if, people are distinguishing between what I'd call "voice recognition" and "voice command"?

Perhaps a better question would narrow down what the QOTW was referring to, differentiating between voice command and voice dictation, both of which use voice recognition, but are very different environments.

I do use voice command on my SatNav, not least because it doesn't require pushing a button to activate ... the 'button' is me saying "voice command" then telling it what to do, like "go home" or "navigate, favourites, Janet". But I don't really regard that as voice recognition, any more than commands to Windows to save or print, or Excel to select, copy, switch apps and paste.

Yet, I guess it is voice recognition, or at least, that's what underpins it.

To be clear, voice 'command' is, IMHO, kinda ho-hum-whatever. I use it on the SatNav because it's marginally more convenient, and faster. But I wouldn't pay extra to buy a SatNav that had it over one that didn't.

Voice dictation, on the other hand, is one hell of a productivity booster for me. Bear in mind, I'm a writer, usually working at home, few distractions and little ambient noise, unless I have music on. But I can sit down and dictate, more or less non-stop, for an hour or more in a block, and with voice recog/dictation, I get a lot more words down in that hour. Often, double or more. Triple, even. Why? Just a guess, but because I'm thinking about what to say, not typing, reading, correcting my dodgy typing AND thinking about what to say.

In THAT context, all I can say is that a GOOD voice recog package (Dragon, for me) AND a decent headset (got several, all old now, but Plantronic noice-cancelling USB unit is my normal choice) is certainly one of, if not the best investment I ever made. It's that useful to me.

Of course, a good system, used in a quiet environment, to dictate several hours of text a day, is a very different scenario from trying to use a mobile phone voice command to locate the nearest Starbucks while walking down an unknown high street. I doubt much of a proportion of posters here have the need, or use, that I do, for VR.

[Saracen]

Oh, and in case anyone wonders, most posts here are on an Android tablet with touch screen, not a PC with Dragon .... which explains the typos, and/or time spent editing them out.

[Spud1]

Is there really much difference between the two, with advanced systems at least?

If you put the very basic one-two word commands to one side, and look at something like Voice Attack - i'd suggest it can be just as complex as something like Dragon. The profile i'm using for Elite for example can understand long sentences/phrases and interpret correctly, and makes use of a rudimentary "AI" to respond. E.g. i've got it configured to require an initiation phrase before each command, and to check the current status. These can be combined too..Very much like the star trek computer. (note this is all based on Hazey's "S.A.R.A" profile, which taught me all the basics! All credit to Hazey) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdpsAucSIgw


e.g.

Me: "Sarah?"
Ship: "<reply noise>"
Me: "Deploy landing gear"
Ship: either: "Landing Gear Deployed" or "The landing gear is already deployed, commander"

This can be also be combined as "Sarah, Deploy landing gear" (all one phrase), or even more complex commands like "Sarah, deploy hardpoints and target the first enemy"

Yes its still just picking up phrases and then doing a quick comparison - but it does provide for context, which I think is one of the more important/difficult aspects of voice recognition. Context is also the big selling point of dragon (and back in the day, ViaVoice) as once you get past the basic "what word was that" the context of a given word can have a huge impact on what the software interprets.

Whether its quicker/more efficient etc is a very personal thing. I only use it in situations where I have no alternative - I can touch type much faster than I can dictate and get much better accuracy, so I tend to use voice control only where I don't have access to a keyboard..and thats typically in something like Elite, using the Rift or with a totally hands free tech like a watch/glass.

[crossy]

From many of the posts in this thread, I wonder where, and indeed if, people are distinguishing between what I'd call "voice recognition" and "voice command"?

I did.

To be clear, voice 'command' is, IMHO, kinda ho-hum-whatever. I use it on the SatNav because it's marginally more convenient, and faster. But I wouldn't pay extra to buy a SatNav that had it over one that didn't.

Voice dictation, on the other hand, is one hell of a productivity booster for me. Bear in mind, I'm a writer, usually working at home, few distractions and little ambient noise, unless I have music on. But I can sit down and dictate, more or less non-stop, for an hour or more in a block, and with voice recog/dictation, I get a lot more words down in that hour.

Agree with what you're saying about voice dictate but, like I said, it really depends what you're writing. If it's docs with a lot of technical content (or in my case user manuals) then you're on a hiding to nothing ... you spend more time correcting prediction errors than the recognition system saves. On the other hand, I'm having to multitask, so anything that assists that would be useful.

I really don't like voice command for satnavs, but that's maybe me being cheap and refusing to buy a standalone unit. I'd prefer to pull to the side of the road and press-screen. And tbh a smartphone satnav app is good enough for the few times I need a digital map reader.

Here's a clarification question - how enthusiastic would people be about using speech recognition at home? For a (large?) proportion of the Hexus readers I suspect SR would be more suitable for domestic use than @work.

PS totally, totally agree about the use of a good headset - from what I did in the past it can make the difference between "usable" and "take this thing away". Trouble is that "management" invariably want you to use whatever CorpIT can find at the bottom of the stores cupboard.