Nuance Wants Voice Recognition To Take Over Your Entire Phone


Nuance’s voice recognition software already crops up in plenty of places — most famously to power Siri, but also in standalone app Dragon Go!, some smart TVs, and even cars. Now, though, Nuance is planning to have its software power each and every app you use.

That’s made possible by a new software development kit that it’s releasing, so all iOS and Android app developers can use the same voice recognition technology in any app. That news alone is kinda dull, though.

What makes the announcement exciting is Nuance’s other recent news. Earlier this summer Nuance announced that its new Dragon ID software can decipher the sound of your voice — effectively doing away with passwords and relying on the distinctive features in your speech to recognise you.

Combine that with a phone-wide ability to control apps with your voice, and you’re in the future. Want to pay a bill? Nuance’s software knows it’s you speaking so can log into your banking app for you and make a transfer. Want to buy something from Amazon? Shout at your handset and one-click purchasing is just a sentence away.

The video released by Nuance goes some way to demonstrating just how useful that could be — if you can find a nice quiet environment in which to use it. But while the future may soon be here, it may not necessarily be desired. Would you want your phone to be entirely powered by voice? [Nuance]


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