Google Voice Search May be Coming Soon

vitaly.friedman writes "The master of text-based search could be looking to lend a voice to Internet users everywhere, or so it appears based on Google's latest patent. Patent #7,027,987, issued today by the US Patent and Trademark Office, covers a 'Voice interface for a search engine.'"

WTF?

lend a lend a voice?

Do Slashdot editors submit stories with voice recognition software?

Step 2 found!

i) Take two existing technologies, such as voice recognition and search engines.
ii) Put the two together and patent the result.
iii) Profit!

Coming Soon?

I'd say that if Google had any serious plans to do anything with this, then we would have heard something about it already (something more than a paper written 4 years ago). Although the patent was only just issued today, it was filed over 5 years ago.

It seems like a pretty big logical leap to say that it is "coming soon" based on the fact that the USPTO finally got their butts into gear.

It's probably just an idea they though was cool at the time, and should be patented in case they want to use it some time.

Not useful for me...

I doubt speaking the word "sex" to my pc at work will get me a raise anytime soon... I'll stick with traditional methods of finding my porn... =)

Not necessarily voice search

It can be interpreted either way. Either a search engine for audio files with speech recognition, which could be used to index podcasts and news streams; or a voice-driven interface instead of a visual one. Now which is it?

Google Voice Search

Haven't they already done a thing like this [google.com] before? Maybe they've only just patented it. Either way I don't see a story here.

Supporting vague patents supports terrorism

Economic terrorism, that is.

Do they mean that they patented using voice recognition software to work with the Search textbox? Is this some sort of technology to take voice waveforms into the search engine and form audio search patterns? Is this about taking a media clip and finding the source media?

What? It's so vague.

Make sure you don't say "hello" to it

Especially from the image search page.

You have been warned.

Voice Matching

Great! Now the government will be able to not only track my search results...but also attach my voice to it! Not that I'm scared or anything...

This has been in "beta" / "alpha for a while now?

I remember that Google had a link that you could dial in and give it a search term. You would then go to their "voice results" page and see what it turned up. I assume that the patent is based on this? I haven't looked at it in a few years and I don't even know if the page is still there, but this really isn't anything new, just that the patent was now granted.

Privacy Issues

In the library...

Google Voice: Please state what it is that you would like to search for.
MAN (whispering): .....porn
GV: I'm sorry, I did not understand you. Please state your search item again.
MAN (whispering): ...porn
GV: I'm sorry, I did not understand you. Please state your search item again.
MAN (whispering): porn
GV: I'm sorry, I did not understand you. Please state your search item again.
MAN (shouting): PORN! I want to search for PORN you stupid ass computer!
(stares from every person in the vicinity)
GV: ...Search item confirmed. Commencing search for "porn".

Just think of all the entertaining stories that wide-spread voice recognition will bring us ^_~

Another garbage patent...

Wow, yet another garbage patent that does nothing except combine two existing things (search engines and voice-controlled software). Is there anyone in the world who seriously believes that without giving Google a 20-year monopoly on this, nobody would've thought of this?

Feb 2001

That is when this was applied for. Since we haven't seen it yet, I would not put a lot of hope (or concern?) into this showing up anytime soon.

Three Wise Monkeys

MEMO: Google morality checklist

1. See no evil. Check, moderate SafeSearch is on.
2. Hear no evil. We're still coding the filter, but so far we've managed to eliminate "cocksucker" from the recognition patterns.
3. Do no evil.

Prior art from the handicapped ?

I know of 2 people that have been searching the internet from voic command for over 6 years now.

Is this prior art ?
Google is OBVIOUSLY not the first to do it or even think of it.
I can show you a half dozen Sc-Fi episode that have touched on this as well.
How can you patent a communication medium's use ????

I can't wait..

My boss always uses words like 'shit', 'hell', 'sucks', 'piecce of shit', 'fsck' and so on..

I can't wait to see his face when google toolbar will start throwing pages at him.

European Quaero.

I was almost sure that I had read something about a EC funded "google-killer" search engine being developed in europe, which planned to do this. Sure enough:

Attack of the Eurogoogle [economist.com] (Need subscription).
No subscription needed here [eiu.com]
From the article:

researchers at the University of Karlsruhe are developing Quaero's voice-recognition and translation technology, with funding from the European Commission. [...] In addition, speaker-identification software will allow users (via computer microphones) to search the internet for audio clips recorded in their own voices, or those of other speakers.

Prior art

The disabled have been using voice-interface software for years. I might still have an old copy of Voicetype shovelware that came with a Pentium PC in 1995.

And for a search-engine-specific prior usage, in my area calling directory assistance has been largely automated using voice-recognition software, as have many coprorate phone systems.

Like Star Trek, Computer... Find me a _____

In looking at the description and the claims a bit, this is primarily an extension of their search interface. From the patent's description:

"...a method that provides search results includes receiving a voice search query from a user; deriving one or more recognition hypotheses from the voice search query, each recognition hypothesis being associated with a weight; constructing a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses; providing the weighted boolean query to a search system; and providing results of the search system."

I can see how Google would want to use some form of voice recognition, defined as the 'shortest recognition hypothesis' or a combination of them, to convert it into text thereby using a search engine. Claim 20 could be read to mean a voice command converted to text for a computer readable 'search query' which is bound by the steps in the claim.

They're probably not going to own the idea of computer used voice generated searches, but they're seemingly moving to own voice command into Google searches as an added feature. Only as interesting as the voice recognition behind it...

CSorice

what is the difference

between "a voice interface for a search engine" and a "generic computer voice interface program"? moreover, what is the difference between a "generic computer voice interface program" and a "generic computer interface program"? further, what is the difference between a "generic computer interface program" and a "generic computer program"? between a "generic computer program" and a programming language?

perhaps the only patentable thing in software might be breakthroughs in compiler theory or instruction sets, etc., because once you have a programming language, everything constructed from it could be produced by enough monkeys with typewriters, likely not even infinite. combinations (mash-ups) as patents? please, please no...

Google Pronounce - not just vox searches

Now here's a thought - what if Goog were to implement their existing "Did you mean _____?" search suggestions with a voice-based system?

You speak "find Ly-nux!" - it speaks back "Did you mean Lin-nucks?"

While the example might make you chuckle, I think that such a feature could have far reaching impact - as has been discussed previously, one of the things which prevents people from learning about or discussing new things or ideas is an inability to pronounce the associated terms. Such an implementation would go a long way to solving that issue, in an emotionless and non-threatening manner.

Vocabulary is the trick..

In Windows, it's fairly easy to hook up voice recognition to a browser. It would probably take me about 2 hours to come up with a basic voice-controlled browser.

As the article suggests, the vocabulary is the problem. When doing dictation, grammar rules allow the voice recognition engine to usually narrow the list of words making recognition more accurate.

The problem with searching is that you could be searching for anything. I'm not even sure their ideas of using past searches is even a particularly good idea. I do searches on such a wide variety of subjects, I'm not sure I'd want it to make assumptions about what I'm searching for.

This would be a nice application for a PDA or something, but for desktop, voice recognition just doesn't make much sense yet. The biggest problem is background noise, which really intereferes with recognition accuracy. Then there's the issue of whether or not you're actually talking to the computer. I like to listen to music when I work, so that's an issue, after all, it doesn't matter if it works for the rest of the world, it matters if it works for me!

There are various groups working on these problems and I suspect in the next 5 years, we'll start seeing much better voice recognition that can get past a lot of these problems. Once that happens, I think we'll start seeing a lot more voice recognition applications on the desktop.

All that said, voice recognition is in pretty good shape today. In a quiet environment, accuracy is pretty impressive. I've been playing with it off and on for about 6 years now and things have come a long way in that time. I remember when doing dictation had horrible accuracy and hogged my 200mhz Pentium. The extra computing power we have today definitely helps.

I've Seen this Episode

Kirk: Computer, get me coordinates to Alpha Centari!

Computer: Did you mean: coordinates to alpha centauri

Kirk: Yes, yes, okay.

Computer: Alpha Centauri Alpha Centauri B is much brighter than Alpha Centauri C but still alot weaker than A. ... The coordinates for these stars are: ... www.eso.org/outreach/eduoff/edu-prog/catchastar/CA S2002/cas-projects/nether_alphacen_1/astrofacts.ht ml - 15k - Cached - Similar pages

Kirk: What? Quick! Oh, OH KAY! for Pete's sake!

Spock: Captain, you get better results if you say, 'I'm feeling lucky'

MjM

google labs demo

they have a demo (currently down) http://labs1.google.com/gvs.html [google.com]

To try out this demo, please follow these simple steps:

1. Pick up the phone and call the automated voice search system at [phone].

2. After the prompt Say your Search Keywords, say your query to the system.

3. Click this link and a new window will open with your voice search results.

4. Say another query, and the new window with the search results will be updated with the new results.

Royalty payments...

So now I'll need to write a check to Google each time I yell "HONEY! WHERE ARE MY KEYS?" in the house?

Wait a moment, voice search?

Didn't Google Labs [google.com] used to have a phone-in search project some years ago that didn't go anywhere? I'm pretty sure that they did, and looking at the date of filing for the patent, it's likely that's how it came about.

I wouldn't keep my hopes up for Google Voice Search any time soon based on that.

Poor mans ...

... Echelon. I hope we can combine it with this [slashdot.org]

Cellphones and MMORPGs

I would guess that the most immediately useful application of a voice interface to a search engine would be in facilitating searches from devices like cellphones. Right now, entering search terms in a cellphone is quite tedious. Another possible use of the underlying voice recognition technology would be voice to text conversion for chat in MMORPGs [proliphus.com] and other online games. Why? Because as voice enabled games and services like Xbox Live become more popular, the problem of "bad language" has continued to grow. Policing this is difficult because voice chat is not logged in any easy to search or filter manner, if at all. If Google lives up to its reputation, it's not a big stretch to see them building on their voice technology to provide voice chat to text logging for online game providers. Being able to log voice chat would also be useful to the gamers themselves.

How you could use this

Don't think of voice recognition on computers - that's so 1990's.

First off, I think patents like this are evil, and though I haven't read the details I suspect it's written broadly.

This patent applies to telephony and devices that haven't been invented yet. How slick would it be to integrate your browser on your cell phone with Google's services? Think about the integration with Asterisk you could do. You could have Google provide driving directions based on your spoken input. Want a picture of your favorite porn star? Say the name into Google and you could send a pic to your PDA.

The problem right now is speech recognition. Nuance is the best game in town and they're damn expensive. What Google (and the world!) needs is an open source speech recognition engine. (We're talking engines, not those cute, cuddly Naturally Speaking-like toys.) Then you can build server side apps relying on voice - say build it into every Asterisk server, into Vonage's network, etc. Those servers receive the voice requests and make the search query over the Internet to Google using a custom API. Google returns the result to them and they figure out what to do. This makes the infrastructure overhead negligible for Google and puts the burden of application development on others.

UH??

....covers a 'Voice interface for a search engine.' It says "A Search Engine", no names mentioned, so why are people assuming and coming to conclusions that it is google?? It could very well be other search engines

Kiss my shiny metal.....

[Professor] Good news everyone... We have been Googled. Here's the numbers of individual hits. [Bender] Wohoo!! I win again. (singing) Bender is great, Bender is great ...

Too late

A start up company I once worked for already developed this idea, and proof of concept *working prototype*. The prior work provision would allow it to be an invalid patent if ever challenged.

Mobile voice search is not the killer technology

Just like how Google is unveiling Writely, the Web Word Processor, which is speculated to be a cool and different from our routine MS-Word, so also, for the Mobile space it will be a totally different app. My experience suggests that its not just "e-", "v-", or "m-" nabling of technologies, it has to undergo some kind of transformation to be cool to use which ultimately makes it HOT in the market.
Finally, I don't think US is the best market for m-search & commerce. With just 207 Million subscribers in the US [zdnet.com] at the end of 2005, it is way behind the number subscribers in the East(Japan, China, Malaysia and India). The East and the Europe have worldclass 3G & 4G infrastructure with highly affordable subscription rates for the mobile savvy consumers. While for the internet era, it was the opposite. I guess Mobile 1.0/2.0 is a whole different game than Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

Why bother?

Voice recognition doesn't work properly so why bother implementing something that is "broken" from the start? Why frustrate all those users who are going to have to repeatedly say their search term all because the software can't handle their accent? The keyboard may not be the best input device ever invented but at least typed words do not have an accent. Well, at least not when the words are spelled correctly.

But will it find my truck keys?

That's all fine and good, but what I really want to do is go to meatspace.google.com and type in "Kia Sportage keys" to get white balloons floating over and pointing out keys that go to a Kia Sportage within an N meter spherical radius. Bonus points if the search algorithm doesn't involve a midget that lives under the porch, rifling through everything while you're not looking. When will this happen?

Re:Yay, more patents :-(

If they don't patent it, somebody else will!

-:sigma.SB

Perhaps not what people first guess...

My first read (after reading the ARTICLE :P) is that this isn't voice recognition - its the old "wisdom of croweds" thing.

I always found Google's "Did you mean ____?" to be better than any spell checker (pretty sure its a distance metric thing based on LOTS of mistyped input and follow-up for real users) - don't see a reason why that couldn't apply to voice...

(non-trivially, probably, but still)
--
graphicallyspeaking [kotay.com]

Re:Let me guess...

"My Voice is My Passport, Verify Me..."

My voice is my passport. Record it.

Re:Yay, more patents :-(

These days it seems that legitimate companies need to apply for patents in order to cover thier asses... Either that or purchace a licence for the technology from useless patent holding companies like NTP to avoid getting sued.