Like thats a surprise??
It doesn't understand most Scottish accents!!
Siri is amazing when it works but frankly as with all voice recognition it still fails more often than not for most people I know with various different Scottish region accents.
Apple's voice-recognition app Siri – the big new feature on the iPhone 4S – doesn't work in India because it doesn't recognise all regional accents in the country, reports website DailyBhaskar.com. The iPhone 4S launched in India last night and at midnight there were queues of keen buyers around the Bangalore Apple store. But …
Not a suprise but have they considered the positive effects of this? In a country where clear spoken English is seen as a premium such technology could force users to speak with something more akin to the 'Queen's English' (or the apple equivalent).
If Siri cant understand you chances are neither can a considerable chunk of the world.
It could be used in a similar way to Sugata Mitra's work in India who I was fortunate enough to see in person at last years ALT conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps8MwyJH8Zo
The relivant paper (possible behind a paywall)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01077.x
I've talked to people in London, Manchester, Birmingham & Leeds and I'm continually told I don't seem to have much of an accent and that I am well spoken.
Siri understands me around 85% of the time for simple things and around 25% of the time for more complex queries. Android ICS doesn't do much better either.
Here's Windows 7 having a try:
"Speech recognition still has a very long way to go before you can be used in everyday scenarios of liability."
I said:
"Speech recognition still has a very long way to go before it can be used in everyday scenarios with reliability."
That was in a quiet room with the mic pointed at me but about 30cm away.
Even 99% accurate voice recognition would occasionally drop you in the "She is". (Censored by Windows 7)
I remember trying to break the old Dragon voice dictation software about ten years ago. It managed my best (worst) Rab C. Nesbitt impersonation along with any other accent I threw at it, so I'm surprised that the game hasn't improved since then. I suspect it's not a technology deficiency so much as a woefully narrow set of training data.
My pet gripe about all of these systems is that they cannot deal with names outside the normal American set. I'm Irish, and I have to say that the results of these things on Irish given names is laughable. Without good name recognition, half the functions are useless.
I understand that you can't know how every name is pronounced (and some are pronounced differently in different cultures), but I'd accept something like: "I'm sorry, I'm not sure how these names in your phonebook are pronounced. Could you say them for me so that I can learn them?"
Oh, iPhone I'm in trouble..
Well, goodness, gracious me..
For a certain built in App is not recognising me!
Command not recognised appears on the screen and I begin to scream!
"Stupidy stupid! Stupidy stupid! Stupidy stupid! Stupidy stupid damned thing!"
Then it's says "Dialing Dhumar Singh"!
Voice recognition has been around for decades, but the one flaw it's always had is that unless you speak in a slow monotone unaccented way it never ever works. This is why so little of it exists.
It's the reason so many people hate those automated phone lines, the reason secretaries still use dictation machines to write letters etc.
If a desktop PC with the latest CPU etc struggles I hardly think a mobile phone is ever going to be capable of doing it properly for everyone. But as with all apple ideas, its all about the gimmick and sadly people will still blindly like sheep fight tooth and nail for the iPhone. First apple try to act like they invented video calling and now this, its laughable.
Voice recognition has been around for decades, but the one flaw it's always had is that unless you speak in a slow monotone unaccented way it never ever works. This is why so little of it exists.
It's the reason so many people hate those automated phone lines, the reason secretaries still use dictation machines to write letters etc.
If a desktop PC with the latest CPU etc struggles I hardly think a mobile phone is ever going to be capable of doing it properly for everyone. But as with all apple ideas, its all about the gimmick and sadly people will still blindly like sheep fight tooth and nail for the iPhone. First apple try to act like they invented video calling and now this, its laughable.
what is a british accent? hell, you cant even say what an english accent is. the southerner where grass is pronounced graarse, the georgie where book is pronunced booook etc...
i would consider myself to have a very neutral accent but the iphone cant be relied on for voice dialling (well, my iphone4) and last time i called apple and got their automated system i had to shout 'i want to speak to a real fucking person' at it, oddly it connected me straight to a real person so it understood that ok.
the english language is too variable to get it right 100% of the time until it can understand every regional dialect. which is tough. i lived in hull for a couple of years and there are at least 3 distinct accents in that one city depending on which area people come from.
When I deal with automated voice systems (banks, Fedex, and so on), I just slip into "robot mode", and those systems seem to work better. And, it's fun! But, you may get strange looks if people don't know what is going on, hehehehe...
Disclaimer: I don't know what an Indian or an Irish robot voice would be like. But, I imagine that it's better if slurs and "sss" and clipped sounds are avoided. Robots probably lack accents, too.