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Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

googledocs.blogspot.com

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Re: Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

#61

Post by baldfat »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #53
brotchie wrote: post #18

Super impressive. My wife just spoke full-speed Vietnamese into a Google Doc, 100% correct, even the tone marks.

Is there something particular about Vietnamese that makes it easier than other languages for dictations? Like, does it lack homophones, are letters always pronounced the same way? 100% correct sounds incredible.

> Is there something particular about Vietnamese that makes it easier than other languages for dictations?

phonemic orthographies (These languages should work better) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

English is highly non-phonemic the only language I would think is worst is French/Greek with silent letters and the different accents and in Modern Greek /i/ can be written in six different ways: ι, η, υ, ει, οι and υι. My Italian and most Eastern European languages would be easier European languages for voice translation.

This seriously reminds me of my days in college and grad school learning/teaching dead languages. The dead languages (Latin, ancient Hebrew, Classical/Koine Greek and Aramaic) we really don't know how they were pronounced so we just made them phonetic, which tells you that we don't speak them correctly since no language is 100%.

Vietnamese is interesting because there are several dialects that would trip this up but doesn't appear to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language

Re: Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

#62

Post by jessriedel »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #24

Its pretty impressive. I haven't touched much upon trying such things for quite a few years when I last had a quick play with Dragon Naturally Speaking. It's getting PRETTY close, with a basic cheap laptop microphone, my Australian accent, and no training. But I did say pretty close. Not exactly right. And I'm only speaking a few sentences. I read out a passage aloud, and apart from not quite getting everything right…

> I read out a passage aloud, and apart from not quite getting everything right (but getting some remarkably difficult words/names correct), the thing that struck me is how written word, and the art form of such, is in fact quite different from a verbal stream of spoken words. The little sigils and breaking up of a written text conveys a whole bunch of meaning and subtlety that a word for word stream doesn't quite get.

Worth noting that kids who start using this young will have much less problem adapting their speech for automated transcription. Likewise, adults often were drawn to "natural-language capable" Ask Jeeves, but kids just searched with alta vista using grammatically bizarre but effective terms.

Re: Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

#63

Post by petervandijck »

Google seriously needs to build an Amazon Echo competitor NOW. Using Nest (if that division can muster actually creating a new product) and it's learning chops.

Google: please don't mess this up as a science experiment as you do so many products - build it for real.

Re: Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

#64

Post by jessriedel »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #34
cellover wrote: post #25

They have my emails, they have my documents, they have my pictures, they have my location, they have my browsing history, and now they can have my voice. Only lacks DNA, fingerprints, retina footprint and non-verbal communication. Oh wait, it's only a matter of time.

I was waiting for this comment. What's the alternative? No voice-recognition? Voice recognition that only runs client-side and lacks all the advantages a centralised service can provide?An equivalent provided by someone else that, for whatever reason, you trust more than Google? Edit: I didn't downvote you, though, and I've upvoted to counteract whoever did. The point you're raising can clearly contribute to an inter…

> Voice recognition that only runs client-side and lacks all the advantages a centralised service can provide?

By the way, my impression from talking to someone in the know was that Google has been developing client-side voice recognition that is only a about couple of years behind their cloud voice recognition in quality. (The client-side service still requires the huge amounts of voice data to be used to train the software, but it can run offline on a cell phone processor.) Right now being two years behind in quality is quite noticeable, but that will change soon once quality plateaus near perfect, and client-side voice recognition will make sense again.

Just rumors though.

Re: Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

#65

Post by talles »

pjmlp wrote: post #42
NegatioN wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The offensive part is that you're what you're stating is something you haven't even bothered to examine before deciding to write down an opinion.

Because in 30 years of computing experience I am used to my mother tongue being forgotten by American companies when they announce voice dictation software. I am not sorry if others cannot take critics from those used to be ignored by them.

If you consider that your comment is against the same company behind translate.google.com, which does have a (wonderful) Portuguese support, you'll probably be able to see how unthoughtful it was.

Heck, Google even have specific doodles for Brazil and even have an office here in my city.

I'm a native Portuguese speaker and I'm not pissed off as you are.

Re: Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

#68

Post by mtgx »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #34
cellover wrote: post #25

They have my emails, they have my documents, they have my pictures, they have my location, they have my browsing history, and now they can have my voice. Only lacks DNA, fingerprints, retina footprint and non-verbal communication. Oh wait, it's only a matter of time.

I was waiting for this comment. What's the alternative? No voice-recognition? Voice recognition that only runs client-side and lacks all the advantages a centralised service can provide?An equivalent provided by someone else that, for whatever reason, you trust more than Google? Edit: I didn't downvote you, though, and I've upvoted to counteract whoever did. The point you're raising can clearly contribute to an inter…

The alternative would be for Google to take end-to-end encryption seriously, even for their databases, so even they can't access most of the information gathered from the users.

But they haven't even done that for Hangouts yet, let alone for their databases.

Re: Google launches voice typing in Google Docs

#70

Post by k-mcgrady »

Klathmon wrote: post #67
k-mcgrady wrote: post #66

Is there a technical reason this only works in Chrome? It wouldn't work for me in my main browser (Safari 9.1).

Safari doesn't support the 'getUserMedia/Stream API' so it can't work on safari.

Thanks. A quick search shows 'getUserMedia/Stream API' is supported in Firefox though and people on this thread don't seem to be able to use it in Firefox (I haven't personally tested).
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