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Apple looking to hire voice technology, speech recognition specialists

by Kelly Hodgkins Dec 22nd 2010 at 11:30AM

Apple is looking to hire several voice and speech recognition experts for iOS, according to four new postings on Apple's job board. The new hires would join the iOS Application Framework team and would be working on "speech-related development activities." These multiple listings come hot on the heels of the public release of several patents detailing contextual voice commands for the iPhone. If you add in Apple's acquisition of Siri, you have the possible beginning of a robust voice control system for the iPhone and other iOS devices.

Improved speech recognition would be a welcome addition to the iOS platform. In my experience, the current implementation of voice command on the iPhone is mediocre. While third-party applications like Dragon Dictation are superb, native speech control is wrong as often as it is right. Apple needs to refresh this portion of its mobile OS as it is falling behind Android in voice control technology.

Google recently added support for personalized recognition to its popular Voice Search application for Android. In its current form, the app can be fine tuned to your voice so that you can dictate a text, navigate to a destination or place a call with increasing accuracy.

[via 9to5 & CNET]



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Apple is looking to hire several voice and speech recognition experts for iOS, according to four new postings on Apple's job board. The new...
 

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Brian Stints

A job in speech recognition is one that many are trying to get into. But, there are not that many out there. I have searched and if anyone can help me, please post here.

BTW - A pretty good job site for iphone and cocoa developers is http://www.iPhoneCareers.com.

January 20 2011 at 2:26 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steven Stock

The issue isn't that speech recognition is as accurate as it is wrong; it depends what you are using it for. Also while the accuracy may have been poor in decades past, technology developments from firms like Nuance Communications (NUAN) have improved accuracy beyond 95% for speech to text in specialized industries. With products Dragon Medical for physicians and Dragon Legal, the vocabularies are customized to work with the types of dictation those professionals are accustomed to. Lets not write off the existing tech that these new apps are being built on. Its the application and the purpose for the technology not that it is generally good or bad...

December 28 2010 at 9:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
digitalsedition

FINALLY! Speech on the iOS platform is woefully inadequate. Finally a framework that will let us build speech based applications.

December 22 2010 at 4:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
joey

they need to add this this is the only feature i want that android has and does well.

December 22 2010 at 1:25 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
conkako

i think apple is looking to do a voice-type of apple script for the iOS platform

December 22 2010 at 1:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kayro

Interesting topic at the moment.
Just saw that Jibbigo (on-device speech recognition and translation) was released a few days ago...
Those small devices seem to have a lot more power than my first mac...

December 22 2010 at 11:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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