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Scottish Speech Recognition a Wee Problem for Siri, Really

The Apple iPhone 4S launched in October 2011 with its voice recognition innovation feature Siri. Siri allows users to operate the device with voice commands to create text messages, emails, notes, reminders, searches and make calls. Siri was designed to understand normal speech, but Scottish users have found Siri is struggling to understand the Scottish accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My40XgYEvLM

Apparently the Scottish have had ongoing issues with most speech recognition implementations, as illustrated in this viral 'Burnistoun' elevator comedy sketch. In fact, many other English speakers struggle to understand the Scottish accent and many Scottish based youtube channels find they need to use sub-titles so the rest of the world can understand them.

One can't help but wonder if this technology will be developed to accommodate accent variations or if particular accents could be lost in varying our accents to be understood by software.

Do you know anyone battling with voice recogition or have any thoughts? Tell us about it in the comments below.

 

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