Google’s voice recognition has improved so much that it is able to understand the human language with 95 percent accuracy. The feature is beneficial not only to the users but also to Google Assistant which is being added into more and more Android phones. Google Assistant is referred as the “intelligent personal assistant” developed as part of Allo which is Google’s messaging app. The change was likely expected, however, it is still remarkable because Google has enhanced its language understanding capability by 20 percent since 2013.
According to Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the voice recognition software’s improvement has happened very quick, in just about four years or less, and it has almost perfected the feature. This has been the result of the machine learning algorithms’ enhancement which is able to recognize speech and respond accordingly. Going back to 2010, the speech recognition accuracy was just about 70 percent, however, it was increased to 90 percent in 2016. Meeker also stated that voice queries are starting to overcome online questions, thus making it one of the most important internet trends this year. In fact, over 20 percent of the mobile queries are done through voice. It transforms Google Chrome into an app that recognizes speech, thus, enabling the user to type emails, long messages, essays, etc., without even having to touch the keyboard.
This feature has been recognized by Meeker, saying that it should become the most efficient input type because it is vision and hands-free. This does not only provide convenience but also a more personalized experience to the user. Meanwhile, the American venture capitalist noted that most voice recognition tools are still complicated to use, for now, but when a particular one reaches an almost hundred percent accuracy, individuals will start using this tool frequently, or at least that’s what Meeker expects will happen. Aside from the voice recognition software, Google is also including other features in most of its products such as the mobile and home voice-powered assistants and Google Translate, a free language translation service that interprets speech, text or images. With these improvements, the company is attempting to help its users move toward a future that makes communicating with a machine as smooth as talking to another person.