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Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

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Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#21

Post by gruez »

zamalek wrote: post #20
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #8

I'm curious about the privacy policies behind both engines and their development. Google's gotten an advantage in many fields by simply trampling over user's rights. Apple has been more respectful of user rights, and that's kind of made life harder for them too.

New Pixels (I think 3, but it may only be 4) have an inference chip of some form. All of this is done on-device. They ported this to older devices, but it's not as fast (but still offline). The assistant is one place (probably only place) where Google has a better privacy story than most (including Apple). Notwithstanding the phone offline capabilities, you can tell the home devices (which use online transcription) "…

>All of this is done on-device

Having an on-device inference chip doesn't preclude them from sending back "telemetry" to improve their models. Unless they explicitly say that they don't send back data (or there's a toggle for that), my default assumption is that they do.

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#22

Post by tsycho »

It's amusing (from the comments) how much people are biased towards Apple.

1. Apple does it online, Google does it offline, hence Apple being slower is okay. But why is Apple's transcription more inaccurate then?

2. Google violates privacy because it used 411 data to train its models, hence its speech transcription quality is better. But Apple is the one doing it online, are we sure it's not using the voice data too, similar to how it has/was doing it with Siri?

It will sound like I am trying to defend/promote Google here, but that's very far from my intent.

As an iPhone user since the first iPhone, I just want iPhones to be better. I use iPhones for the same privacy concerns as many of you, but let's not give a pass to Apple. Let’s demand higher quality from them so that they spend the time, money and effort to improve. I don’t want to feel like I am compromising on a worse overall experience in favor of better privacy when i buy my next phone.

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#23

Post by nods »

tsycho wrote: post #22

It's amusing (from the comments) how much people are biased towards Apple. 1. Apple does it online, Google does it offline, hence Apple being slower is okay. But why is Apple's transcription more inaccurate then? 2. Google violates privacy because it used 411 data to train its models, hence its speech transcription quality is better. But Apple is the one doing it online, are we sure it's not using the voice data too,…

Why do you say: "I use iPhones for the same privacy concerns as many of you"? In the past I have heard rumors that is not true, with a quick search I found out a recent article on the rumors that I heard once: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/05/21/apple-ip...

PS: Either way, I agree with most of your comment. :)

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#24

Post by willis936 »

nods wrote: post #23
tsycho wrote: post #22

It's amusing (from the comments) how much people are biased towards Apple. 1. Apple does it online, Google does it offline, hence Apple being slower is okay. But why is Apple's transcription more inaccurate then? 2. Google violates privacy because it used 411 data to train its models, hence its speech transcription quality is better. But Apple is the one doing it online, are we sure it's not using the voice data too,…

Why do you say: "I use iPhones for the same privacy concerns as many of you"? In the past I have heard rumors that is not true, with a quick search I found out a recent article on the rumors that I heard once: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/05/21/apple-ip... PS: Either way, I agree with most of your comment. :)

Because the alternative is Android, which is very difficult to de-Google. Even if you do de-Google you need to open yourself up to a swath of security concerns. Why would I trust some internet account that is giving me a binary that compromises my phone for me? Should I trust that it will only do what they say it will do because they are a good person? Would they have nothing to gain for having complete control of my device?

So, if the choice of secure phone is between stock Android and stock iPhone, then I think iPhone is the lesser of two privacy evils.

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#25

Post by scblock »

tsycho wrote: post #22

It's amusing (from the comments) how much people are biased towards Apple. 1. Apple does it online, Google does it offline, hence Apple being slower is okay. But why is Apple's transcription more inaccurate then? 2. Google violates privacy because it used 411 data to train its models, hence its speech transcription quality is better. But Apple is the one doing it online, are we sure it's not using the voice data too,…

Apple does not do the transcription online, at least not on any modern iPhone. Turn on airplane mode and disconnect wifi and give it a try yourself.

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#26

Post by jneplokh »

willis936 wrote: post #24
nods wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say: "I use iPhones for the same privacy concerns as many of you"? In the past I have heard rumors that is not true, with a quick search I found out a recent article on the rumors that I heard once: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/05/21/apple-ip... PS: Either way, I agree with most of your comment. :)

Because the alternative is Android, which is very difficult to de-Google. Even if you do de-Google you need to open yourself up to a swath of security concerns. Why would I trust some internet account that is giving me a binary that compromises my phone for me? Should I trust that it will only do what they say it will do because they are a good person? Would they have nothing to gain for having complete control of my…

GrapheneOS is a de-googled Android and secure.

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#27

Post by walterbell »

A printed dictionary captures extended history of human language. An audio recognition model based on global mass surveillance can snapshot similar history. After a good model exists and can be run entirely offline, the (sunk) privacy costs are dwarfed by new value that can be created by speech-to-text enablement of human expression.

This is what Google has done and it was a monumental human achievement, deserving a place in history alongside Gutenberg, due to the small size of the model that could operate fully offline on power and space constrained mobile phones.

Compare this approach (partial mass surveillance generating privacy-preserving offline models) with the approaches of competitors like Alexa & Siri: both use mass surveillance for model training, but neither of them make their models available for offline and privacy-preserving public use.

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#28

Post by baq »

scblock wrote: post #25
tsycho wrote: post #22

It's amusing (from the comments) how much people are biased towards Apple. 1. Apple does it online, Google does it offline, hence Apple being slower is okay. But why is Apple's transcription more inaccurate then? 2. Google violates privacy because it used 411 data to train its models, hence its speech transcription quality is better. But Apple is the one doing it online, are we sure it's not using the voice data too,…

Apple does not do the transcription online, at least not on any modern iPhone. Turn on airplane mode and disconnect wifi and give it a try yourself.

i think it does both. online has much better accuracy in my experience.

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#29

Post by _nhynes »

scblock wrote: post #25
tsycho wrote: post #22

It's amusing (from the comments) how much people are biased towards Apple. 1. Apple does it online, Google does it offline, hence Apple being slower is okay. But why is Apple's transcription more inaccurate then? 2. Google violates privacy because it used 411 data to train its models, hence its speech transcription quality is better. But Apple is the one doing it online, are we sure it's not using the voice data too,…

Apple does not do the transcription online, at least not on any modern iPhone. Turn on airplane mode and disconnect wifi and give it a try yourself.

It requires iOS 13. Here's the code that does it:

    var req: SFSpeechRecognitionRequest;
    if #available(iOS 13, *) {
        req.requiresOnDeviceRecognition = true
    }
And the docs link: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/speech/sfspeechrec...

Re: Speech to Text on iPhone vs. Pixel

#30

Post by nods »

jneplokh wrote: post #26
willis936 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the alternative is Android, which is very difficult to de-Google. Even if you do de-Google you need to open yourself up to a swath of security concerns. Why would I trust some internet account that is giving me a binary that compromises my phone for me? Should I trust that it will only do what they say it will do because they are a good person? Would they have nothing to gain for having complete control of my…

GrapheneOS is a de-googled Android and secure.

I would assume ROMs like LineageOS would be viable as well.
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