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Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

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Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be waiting a while. The problem you describe - with GPS - is an acoustic modeling problem, and a very difficult one at that. Cars come in many shapes and make lots of odd noises and various speeds, not to mention these devices are mounted in many places in relation to the speaker.

The voice recognition on Android Auto works fine in the interior of every car where I've tried it. The manufacturers include well-placed microphones dedicated to the purpose.

Hopefully those abilities and integration will filter into open source implementations. Right now, it seems like AM is owned by the big players and will be for the foreseeable future.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#152
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As mentioned earlier in the article, the latency reduction is huge. Well, on macOS offline voice recognition is actually much slower than online. Not to mention the choice of words and Vocab is quite limited. I love to get an offline version, but so far every online version seems to be better.

I don't think that means this one will be slower. Google has always been the leader in the voice recognition field. I'll bet they'll do offline processing better than Apple.

>Google has always been the leader in the voice recognition field

Interestingly may be only for English. In my experience Apple is doing far better in Japanese, Chinese ( Both Mandarin and Cantonese )

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#153
For application purposes where you don't want to source the audio from the microphone, is it possible for an Android application to feed audio to Gboard in order to source audio from other sources than the microphone? Maybe the Pixel has a mixer which allows audio from sources other than the microphone?

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#154
post #116
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it didn't force-expire downloaded maps after a while...

I get a popup/notification once a month or so, when on wifi. It just asks if I want an update. There are settings to automatically update offline maps and one to control the automatic downloading of offline maps. Seems pretty reasonable to me, after all roads do change over time. My main motivation is to make nav less bandwidth intensive (I pay per GB with Google FI) and to ensure I have maps even if I don't have a g…

It's reasonable to warn and suggest to update. It's not reasonable to not allow to use the old maps just because you don't update - but the Maps app enforces that.

It might have something to do with licensing. Either way, OsmAnd doesn't have that problem.

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means google doesn't need to pay for all the servers busy doing speech recognition. They shifted that work to the user's device.

It's hilarious how they can't do anything right. If it's in the cloud it's evil because Google, if it happens on device it's evil because Google.

Who said it's evil?

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still send the information they collected from your microphone later, when you connect to the internet ... You want an open source solution, not just an offline solution.

Even so, offline AI solutions have been piss poor and Google moving the state of the art in spite of their vested interest in keeping people online is a good thing. Yes, we want an open source solution, but I'm not going to work on it. So who's going to work on it? Are you? In absence of resources working towards the ideal, I'll applaud any step in the right direction.

To be fair there are others that have been pushing the needle in this space for considerable time. The standout for me is https://snips.ai Offline, multiple platforms, multiple languages, many parts open source and more oss parts in the pipeline. While certainly not currently aimed at dictation, but instead assistant building and automation. In this space on device speed, privacy & offline are critical. In the case of Snips "piss poor" falls short from the reality of what I have experienced YMMV.

Nonetheless we all benefit from this progress

Re: Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)

#157
post #118
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's stupid. I do offline maps mainly for the times when I don't have a good connection. It makes no sense to lose the maps when you are spending an extended amount of time off-grid. That's exactly when you need offline maps.

I suspect very very few people pay to have a smart phone and don't get it on WAN or wifi at least once a month.

If I remember correctly, the maps aren't auto-updated by default; you do get notifications, but those are too easy to ignore (esp. since Maps is chatty in general).

And then for someone on an expensive metered or slow connection - which is a lot of people in the developing countries - they might not want auto-update at all. So if they didn't notice expiration, they'll find out that their maps aren't there next time they try to navigate offline.

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