Apple Training Siri To Understand Users With Atypical Speech

Katie Deighton, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. said its Hold to Talk feature, introduced on hand-held devices in 2015, already lets users control how long they want the voice assistant Siri to listen for, preventing the assistant from interrupting users that have a stutter before they have finished speaking.

The company is now researching how to automatically detect if someone speaks with a stutter, and has built a bank of 28,000 audio clips from podcasts featuring stuttering to help do so, according to a research paper due to be published by Apple employees this week that was seen by The Wall Street Journal.

The data aims to help improve voice-recognition systems for people with atypical speech patterns, an Apple spokesman said.

Maybe they can train Siri to understand users with typical speech next.

In all serious, Apple’s commitment to accessibility is a good thing, but you’d think they would start by making Siri work well for the vast majority of the population.