Security and privacy remain serious hurdles to making smartphones that persistently listen
In an interview on Technology Review, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's tech news site, Vlad Sejnoha, chief technology officer at Nuance Communications Inc. (NUAN) discussed what he viewed was the next wave of smartphone hardware.
Nuance knows a thing or two about voice commands. It is arguably the world's premier voice recognition firm. Its code drives such apps as Ford Motor Comp.'s (F) Sync infotainment system. But perhaps Nuance's biggest emerging business is in smartphones, thanks in part to Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) Siri voice assistant, which Nuance co-developed.
Voice control is increasingly being used to do everything from schedule meetings to dictate messages. And Nuance is in a tight race with Google Inc. (GOOG) to deploy the most ambitious features.
Whether it's Google or Nuance voice recognition, one consistency across the current smartphone voice recognition experience is the need to awaken your device. Until you wake it, current device hardware will be unable to listen for voice commands -- something Nuance finds frustratingly inefficient.
Nuance has already accomplished much with its Siri iPhone app. However, it's eager to push the boundaries, allowing low-power voice-command of "sleeping" devices. [Image Source: AP Photo]
The report quotes Mr. Sejnoha as saying that Nuance is working with "a number of" chip companies, "thinking very actively" to bake into smartphone chipsets a feature that would wake them up when issued a voice command. Comments Mr. Sejnoha, "Just turning on the device is part of the problem, right? So we're going to be smoothing that out, eliminating those problems as well."
Along with co-developing hardware for voice wakeup, Nuance is also push for support on the software side, honing its cloud-driven and local speech recognition/parsing algorithms. One key challenge will be to develop security-geared recognition algorithms so that your smartphone could recognize your voice and automatically approve your requests.
Mr. Sejnoha says that Nuance still is grappling with the thorny privacy and security implications of creating smartphones that are persistently listening to their users. If a smartphone were infected with malicious apps the hardware/software voice recognition product could be used to spy on the owner. That's something Nuance is brainstorming ideas to avoid.
But the novelty of being able to have your smartphone sitting idle on your desk and asking it questions like "When's my next appointment?" is very high, so Nuance is pushing to formulate solutions for these challenging issues.
Source: Technology Review
"I mean, if you wanna break down someone's door, why don't you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone!" -- Jon Stewart on Apple and the iPhone
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