SPEECH TECHNOLOGY AND THE INFORMATION COMMUNITY

This short report examines the speech technology market, with particular emphasis upon its future relevance to content providers. Industry experts gave their opinion on the current state of the market, future developments and how speech applications will affect the ways in which content is accessed.

Key points highlighted in the report include:

• The key applications of speech technology at present, which cover three different environments: telephony, desktop and embedded.
• Specific applications on the horizon, including:

* navigation of software and the internet by voice

* accessing information from the internet or company intranet by voice

* more intuitive searching interfaces through speech interaction

* searching of speech recordings

* virtual assistants accessed by telephone to facilitate a number of everyday tasks

* more automated call centres

* speech interaction with cars and entertainment systems.

• The possibilities of speech as a means of inputting information across a number of devices, as the integrated use of telephones, internet-enabled mobile phones, PDAs and PCs becomes more natural.
• The difficulties of convincing the public and the business community that speech technology is more than a science fiction gimmick and that it can successfully improve our interaction with machines.
• The role that content providers can play in developing, marketing and selling killer applications for speech technology.