Google opens access to its speech recognition API • Hacker News Board

Re: Google opens access to its speech recognition API

#31

Post by oaktowner » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #24

So this was very, very exciting until I realized you have to be using Google Cloud Platform to sign up for the preview. Unfortunately all of my stuff is in AWS and I could move it over but I'm not going (far too much hassle to preview an API I may not end up using, ultimately). Regardless this is still very exiting. I haven't found anything that's as good as Google's voice recognition. I only hope this ends up being…

I don't think there's any requirement that you use Google Compute Engine in order to use this API. Yes, you sign up for an account, but of course you have to sign up for an account to use it. This API is part of the platform.

Similarly, you can use the Google Translate API without using Compute Engine, App Engine, etc.

Note: I work for Google (but not on any of these products).

Re: Google opens access to its speech recognition API

#32

Post by zkirill » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #27

zkirill wrote: post #17

I came across CMU Sphnix speech recognition library ( http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net ) that has a BSD-style license and they just released a big update last month. It supports embedded and remote speech recognition. Could be a nice alternative for someone who may not need all of the bells and whistles and prefers to have more control rather than relying on an API which may not be free for long. Side note: if anyone…

Came in here to say this (and also include julius), but yeah cmusphinx is awesome.

I haven't seen Julius before, thank you! How do you decide which one to use?

Re: Google opens access to its speech recognition API

#33

Post by Matt3o12_ » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #24

So this was very, very exciting until I realized you have to be using Google Cloud Platform to sign up for the preview. Unfortunately all of my stuff is in AWS and I could move it over but I'm not going (far too much hassle to preview an API I may not end up using, ultimately). Regardless this is still very exiting. I haven't found anything that's as good as Google's voice recognition. I only hope this ends up being…

I think you just need to register for the Google cloud and can then use the service as you want it. There is probably an advantage if you upload it directly from a Google VM (no costs for uploading from a Google service/very low latency) but it would surprise me if you have to have a Google VM. I can after all upload files to S3 and googles cloud storage even if I host the application on my hardware.

Re: Google opens access to its speech recognition API

#34

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #30

Nice. But what I want is open-source speech recognition.

Like most machine-learning applications, the source code isn't the interesting part, the data is. Google started by training on millions of phrases from Google 411, and then they've been able to continue training anytime someone issues a voice command to an Android device. They have orders of magnitude more data than you could fit into a GitHub repository.

Re: Google opens access to its speech recognition API

#35

Post by nl » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:16 PM UTC

jamesdwilson wrote: post #16

blennon wrote: post #5

This is HUGE in my opinion. Prior to this, in order to get near state-of-the-art speech recognition in your system/application you either had to have/hire expertise to build your own or pay Nuance a significant amount of money to use theirs. Nuance has always been a "big bad" company in my mind. If I recall correctly, they've sued many of their smaller competitors out of existence and only do expensive enterprise dea…

Has Google sued many of their smaller competitors out of business?

No

Re: Google opens access to its speech recognition API

#36

Post by ytjohn » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #25

BorisEm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other "state-of-the-art" speech recognition solutions already exist. For example, Microsoft has been offering it through its Project Oxford service. https://www.projectoxford.ai/speech

Also, CMUSphinx and Julius: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/ http://julius.osdn.jp/en_index.php It is amazingly easy to create speech recognition without going out to any API these days.

I first learned about CMUSphinx from the [Jasper Project](https://jasperproject.github.io/). While Jasper provided an image for the Pi, I decided to go ahead and make a scripted install of CMUSphinx. I spent something like 2 frustrating days attempting to get it installed by hand in a repeatable fashion before giving up.

This was 2 years ago, so maybe it's simple now, but I didn't find it "amazingly easy" back then.

I do have a number of projects where I could definitely use a local speech recognition library. I have used [Python SpeechRecognition](https://github.com/Uberi/speech_recognition/blob/master/exam...) to essentially record and transcribe from a scanner. I wanted to take it further, but google at the time limited the number of requests per day. Today's announcement seems to indicate they will be expanding their free usage, but a local setup would be much better. I'd like to deploy this in a place that might not have reliable Internet.