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IBM Communications GNU is Not Unix IT

IBM to Open Voice Recognition Software 189

Posted by Hemos from the making-it-available dept.
phug writes "According to the NY Times, IBM is donating code that it estimates cost the company $10 million to develop. One collection of speech software for handling basic words for dates, time and locations, like cities and states, will go to the Apache Software Foundation. The company is also contributing speech-editing tools to a second open-source group, the Eclipse Foundation." There's not much information out there yet - e.g. no word on licenses etc. It is worth pointing out that the Eclipse Foundation was started by IBM.
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IBM to Open Voice Recognition Software More

IBM to Open Voice Recognition Software

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  • Great news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wertarbyte ( 811674 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @06:57AM (#10234046) Homepage
    This is great, ViaVoice has disappeared for quite a while now on linux, I hope that this will open a great variety of cool open source applications. If this will be made modular like e.g. festival, I can think of endless applications worth using it.

    • Re:Great news (Score:5, Funny)

      by sgant ( 178166 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:07AM (#10234099) Homepage Journal
      This IS great news because I've been trying to talk into my mouse now for quite a while.

      "Computer?.....commmm-PU-terrrrr?"

      Now hopefully my co-workers will stop giving me strange looks...well, one can dream can't they? No, I'm asking...can one dream?

    • Re:Great news (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gentlewhisper ( 759800 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:09AM (#10234112)
      I think we will see a lot of cool applications for this like virtual ticket sales counters/telemarketing calls (ask a question through the phone and the computer will look up an answer) as well as tech support phone centres!

      No need to outsource to India, opensource it to Linux & ViaVoice!

      Woohoo! +1 for IBM again!

      • Re:Great news (Score:3, Insightful)

        by zeromemory ( 742402 )
        The last thing I would like to see is a real person replaced with a voice-recognizing computer.

        The Alameda County (AC) Transit information number here in the Bay Area uses a voice recognition software to address customer inquiries. The system is very buggy and impractical:

        1. Voice recognition is far from perfect. Try getting a computer to recognize the name of a destination or complicated query while you yell it over ambient noise (ex. traffic noise around a bus stop) on a cell phone.

        2. The software can
    • I've used ViaVoice for dictation and it was very good indeed. One of the serious lacks at this point in the linux community has been speech recognition software - opening this up will make lots of cool things possible.
    • This is like a dream come true. I need voice recognition capabilities for a number of applications and I was just making plans to try out some of the code from CMU's speech project [cmu.edu]. It looks like it should work well, but I haven't heard much about it so I'm skeptical about its accuracy. Now I'll have another choice and I won't feel like I'm locked into just one, arguably immature, choice for my apps.
      Regards,
      Steve

    • Not what you think - here's something that is (Score:4, Informative)

      by ibi ( 61235 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:43AM (#10236777)
      They're not open-sourcing anything resembling ViaVoice to the Eclipse folks. Check out the eclipse voice tools [eclipse.org] proposal. It's directed at making it easier at creating call-center type voice reco apps - not at making Eclipse a voice-directed IDE.

      If you're interested in open-source voice recognition check out OSSRI [ossri.org] - an effort to bring together some sort of practical large vocab speech recog to linux. They're just starting up, but the mailing list archives hold a fair amount of discussion about the current state of the open-source SR world. (Which, to sum up, isn't that great :-) As a stop-gap they're hoping to get WINE support for Dragon/Scansoft NaturallySpeaking.

  • ViaVoice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @06:57AM (#10234047) Journal
    Is this ViaVoice? The linux packages have been pulled off the IBM site a year or so ago but they're still floating around.

    • Re:ViaVoice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sibtrag ( 747020 ) * on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:08AM (#10234106)
      Not likely.

      ViaVoice is a wide-vocabulary speech recognition. The article hints at more focused set of target words (times, dates, locations) for the donated package. Sounds much more like the software supporting airlines which use voice recognition systems to help you request flight information.

      The strategies are quite different.

      ViaVoice encourages you invest some of your time reading training scripts so it can learn your voice and thus recognize a wide variety of words from your specific voice.

      The time/date/city system is likely to be speaker independent (no training scripts to read) but much smaller vocabulary.

      • Re:ViaVoice (Score:3, Informative)

        by clone22 ( 252516 )
        I think you're correct. In this type of voice recognition you define a grammar that establishes the words the application expects to hear in a particular state. A state transition occurs when a response matching the grammar is heard.

        • Re:ViaVoice (Score:3, Interesting)

          by leinhos ( 143965 )
          That sounds like the kind of speech recognition one would want for a command/control interface to a computer (or a "smart home"). AFAIK, the Via Voice stuff is targeted at dictation, which is more difficult. Either way, if this becomes GPL-compatible, it opens the doors to hacking and improvement!

      • IBM also has a grammar based system. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by perky ( 106880 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:47AM (#10234356)
        IBM also has (or rather had in 98,99,2000) a grammar based recognition system based on the same engine, but using compiled grammars and naturally a cut down acoustic model dependant on the contents of the grammar. There was also a toolset, supporting compiling grammars from BNF, building speech telephony applications and so forth.


        IBM Hursley labs had a name dialler 5 years ago that let you phone the computer, say the name fo the person you wanted to speak with, and get put through. They also had a system that provided weather forecasts based on the name of the city or country you said. I was pleased to name the latter "Global Weather Information System" or GWIS, pronounced Gee-whizz. Both ran on the machine under my desk. Both worked reasonably well, especially given that a lot of the acoustic models for names and places were automagically generated.

  • Obligatory quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by ssssmemyself ( 709098 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:01AM (#10234064) Homepage
    Are you sure you meant to say "All your base are belong to us?" Did you mean "All you lasers are better than us?"

  • Code-by-voice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:01AM (#10234067) Homepage
    Eclipse [eclipse.org] is actually a kind-of Swiss Army Chainsaw -IDE. You can make plugins for pretty much everything, so one could speculate that a voice recognition plugin would be feasible.

    I don't know about everyone else, but the concept of coding by voice does fascinate me. There are obvious issues (like eliminating having to say every single control character (if at all possible)), but with a background of RSI I think it's at least worth a shot.

    Thoughts?

    • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:05AM (#10234094) Homepage
      One more thing I forgot to mention in the parent:

      Given the fact that most languages have a rather limited vocabulary, and the fact that class libraries and defined functions/variables can be extracted from existing code software like this could make educated guesses on what you were trying to say.

    • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:2, Interesting)

      by PhiberOptix ( 182584 )
      i believe that the voice recognition would not be used on the eclipse (to dictate code to the ide) directly, but inside it as a api or something, so you can implement voice recognition in the software you create with eclipse.

    • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dJOEK ( 66178 )
      Eclipse is known for it's good GUI api (or at least it's better than regular swing)

      the only way to make voice commands work is to integrate them into your GUI

      so your OK-button object does not only have a textlabel-value but also an audiolabel.

      this works both ways, one way for accessibility ('hear' what button you will click) and the other way is using your own voice to 'click' it (by saying 'Ok')

    • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LousyPhreak ( 550591 ) <lousyphreak AT gmx DOT at> on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:27AM (#10234207)
      this would be nothing more than a nice wow-effect, because most coders write code much faster than speaking it

      • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:4, Insightful)

        by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @08:01AM (#10234472)
        Insightful?
        The parent even mentioned RSI. Not many coders with bad RSI can type faster than speaking it :P
      • Not if writing code causes intense pain. In that case it's a choice between speaking code slowly and creating no code at all.

        I hope this ends up meaning open-source voice-recognition. I do hope it does.

        (says a double-crush sufferer under major physical therapy)
        • Usually a programmers pain is caused by creating code. Carpal Tunnel is just an excuse to take a few days from the brain racking tedium and PHBs.
      • Isn't there some kind of universal law involved here? If you're writing code as fast as you can type, your language is overly verbose.
        • I was thinking the same thing, basically. More people should be using higher level languages more often.
        • If you're writing code as fast as you can type, your language is overly verbose.

          Exactly! And as the sibling post stated; using higher level languages is the key.

          I see an application like this as a first step towards having a computer with the capability of writing the actual code. The task of the programmer is provide the creative energy: describing what the program should do, and how.

          Python would be a prime candidate to start with on a project like this. It hasn't been called "executable pseudocode" fo

      • most coders write code much faster than speaking it

        This is probably true, but I'm thinking about actual writing of source code coding. What about some of the other things you do while coding? For example, I think a voice-activated debugger could be nice. I could use voice to command the debugger while another window (i.e. a web browser open to the web app I'm debugging) manipulating/controlling the program.

    • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:4, Funny)

      by noselasd ( 594905 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:33AM (#10234240)
      Thoughts?

      I don't quite see myself sitting at my office going,(read out loud)
      if parenthese parenthese invar bitwiseor zero x three parentheseend equals
      zero or i less than zero parentheseend curlybrace ...
      No btw erase from first parenthese on last line to second parentheseend ... arrgh.. invar has a capital V btw.

      At any rate I'd guess I can write code faster than I can talk it.
      • if ( ( inVar | 0x3 ) = 0 or i < 0 ) {
        and it would lead to the bad practice of using = instead of == :)
        • Indeed. Though I'd assume speech recognition would use == for equals
          and "assign" or something for =. And or would be || ;)
          Still, seems like a pain.

      • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:2, Interesting)

        by famebait ( 450028 )
        But how about:

        "If-block."

        if( [condition] ){
        [body]
        }

        "Condition or."


        if( [left side] or [right side] ){

        "Right side I lessthan zero. Left side parens equals zero."


        if( ([number])==0 or i < 0 ){

        "Number invar bit-or hex three."


        if ( ( inVar | 0x3 ) = 0 or i < 0 ) {

        "Body." ...

        I might not switch, but I'm sure it could be made usable with some good design.

        -Joahcim.

        • Re:Code-by-voice (Score:3, Interesting)

          by ortholattice ( 175065 )
          Excellent suggestion. And think hybrid - use voice when voice is fastest. After saying "if-block", the cursor could be positioned at "[condition]" which is highlighted for replacement, either by typing at the keyboard or another voice command. Combine the best of both worlds. The best use might be to start off with a few common macros that you would ordinarily bind to function keys, and voice would allow you to use them without interrupting your normal typing flow to hunt and peck for an awkward meta k
      • At any rate I'd guess I can write code faster than I can talk it.

        Yeah, but can you write it faster than you can think it?
        • IBM open-sources voice recognition software, not thought recognition software.

          Of course, the latter would be more efficient, but only if you don't wear your tinfoil hat :-)
    • I've dictated LaTeX to ViaVoice and to my Mum. ViaVoice is faster, but it's still painfully slow.

      Also, while a language may not use many phrases, identifiers do. It would be a real nuisance having to spell out all my portmanteau camel-case identifiers.

      • One thought: read your own link: http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-voicetoo l s/index.html

        Altough your comment is partially relevant to the article, it does not describe what I was referring to.

        From the link you posted:

        "This project proposal serves to take Eclipse into the voice application space. These tools can be used to develop interactive voice response (IVR) systems based on VoiceXML standards, such as speech-driven applications for performing bank transfers, retrieving e-mail, or querying
    • There are obvious issues [..], but with a background of RSI I think it's at least worth a shot.

      But would that eliminate RSI or just relocate it? Do you really want to be the first in your cube farm with carpal tongue?

  • IBM is great! (Score:4, Funny)

    by charlie763 ( 529636 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:02AM (#10234073)
    I love you, IBM. I want you inside me.
    • OK, so I visited it... so what?

      BTW, you might want to fix up your name on the site... I understand that you jumbled it up at the top of the page, but why at the bottom too?

    • Re:IBM is great! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I love you, IBM. I want you inside me.

      One microdrive [amazon.com] suppository coming right up!

  • Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:07AM (#10234100)
    Why is it doing this, is it because they think they can make more money with increased software sales? It also might be an advertising campaign, $10 million donation is buying a lot of free coverage.

    Corporations dont usually give a way stuff for nothing, in fact their mission by law is to maximize profit.

    • Re:Why? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, either their spending $10 million on advertising or its free. Make up your mind.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vidnet ( 580068 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:20AM (#10234168) Homepage
      The software they're releasing is probably a project they've given up on (since they have the much more developed ViaVoice engine). Instead of letting it rot in a closet like most companies would, they give it away and score an immense amount of geek points in the process.


      • The software they're releasing is probably a project they've given up on (since they have the much more developed ViaVoice engine). Instead of letting it rot in a closet like most companies would, they give it away and score an immense amount of geek points in the process.

        Actually, no. Speech rec is a pretty big business in call centers, as in "Speak the name of the city which you want to fly to..." That sort of thing is hard to do with touch-tone, and expensive to do with live agents. IBM's has a

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by toolio ( 232349 )
      Because this same plan has succeded in the past. Take Eclipse, IBM donated the framework for improvement by the open-source community and use it to build their prioprietory Websphere package. They don't have to worry about improving the API, just the extra features that make it worthwhile to buy.

      The same scenario applies here.
    • They foresaw Microsoft pursuing voice rec, decided not to just let them have that as a platform differentiating feature. Besides, they're not releasing it with the intention of seeing it stagnate... they want to see it grow, but they don't want to foot the whole bill.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:51AM (#10234384)
      IBM is a "solutions company".

      They don't make money on software like other companies. The software they develope is used to provide solutions to other people's problems.

      Problems they pay IBM to fix. A large portion of the world is now using Linux for stuff. It's free, it's stable, it's as good as a midrange server OS as anything else out there.

      They want to use Linux, IBM wants to get their money. So IBM supports Linux.

      Also other aspects is what IBM likes. IBM needed a new OS for everything. They have Mainframes, Unix servers, database servers. S/390, Power series, AS/400, etc etc etc.

      For a long time IBM dumped money into propriatory software. Once the platform was antiquated, so was their software, and so the millions of dollars of money they put into their own closed source software is a dead end in just a few years. For all the mainframes, database software, developement software, power series, x86, etc etc etc . All these can be fuffilled by Linux. A open source software OS can provide all the functionality that they NEED.

      Of course something like OS/400 is better then Linux at running databases, but IBM has the capabilities of making nearly as good. Also this developement also benifits other platforms they support, that OS/400 won't run on.

      Buy using Linux they reduce the duplication of effort. No more OS/400 then AIX then this , then that. All of it can be linux, on nearly all their hardware. They just have to make it work.

      That's just one of the reasons. They make money from solutions, not software. People buy IBM to make things work, they don't care HOW or WHY, but they want things to work. With Linux they can get things working, cheaper, and eventually cheaper.

      No more dumping billions of lines of code into various bits of software that don't integrate and will be obsolete in 3 years. Linux has the potential, thru it's system design and open-ness and flexiblity to never go obsolete.. It'll just change with the times.

      Plus IBM would like to see Linux on the desktop, so they can basicly tell microsoft to fuck themselves when time comes.

      With this particular bit of software it ties into their websphere and database efforts. Reseptionists can just talk into the computer, people can just talk into the phone, and the computer understands.

      But it's worthless without the database and the infrastructure to back it up. If most of the rest of the infrastructure is open source to their customers, why make this little bit of it closed source? It just doesn't make sense.

      Sensationalist headlines like "cost IBM 10 million dollars to produce" is misleading.

      IBM doesn't give a flying fuck how much money it cost to make it.

      There is a well know thing called "sunk cost". It basicly means that money that is spent, is spent. Your not going to get it back. You don't survive long in business if you don't "get" this concept.

      A extreme example:

      Say you spent 100,000 dollars on a Windows solution. You have found out now that a Linux solution costing 2000 dollars can do what you want, and better.

      Your potential to make money on the new system is very high. Your potential to make money on the old system is very low.

      Which is smarter? To dump the old software and go with the new to make lots and lots of money? Or to keep the old software just because "you don't want to waste the 100,000 dollars".

      A intellegent person will go with the money making sceme and dump the money pit. A stupid person will be blinded by the sacrifice and stick with the old solution because they can't think clearly.

      IBM is all about making money. If they figure they can save money by using Linux vs AIX they will. They do recommend it to some of their existing AIX customers...

      Think about it this way:
      Linux is cheaper and almost as good. IBM saves money, their customers save money. More saved money by IBM customers means that they are more likely to grow and make even more money.

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Zachary Kessin ( 1372 )
        What he said, plus this gives IBM a few other things for not much money. First of all having one OS for all of their platforms is very useful. The fact that linux comes with so much software already makes it even better. IBM has wanted a comon OS for years I bet, now they have one.

        The other thing is that they like the idea of having one very common OS, like windows is. But with windows someone else controls it. With Linux IBM can go where they want, even if Linus wants to go somewhere else. Now I imagine I

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:37AM (#10236708)
        Nice post, but you forget that IBM is a lot more than one company.

        They don't make money on software like other companies. The software they develope is used to provide solutions to other people's problems.

        No. IBM makes lots of money off software and patents for software processes. WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Portal Server, Lotus Notes, and of course DB2 make up over a billion dollars in revenue last I heard. Granted, that's less than 5% of IBM's total revenue but it's still income.

        They want to use Linux, IBM wants to get their money. So IBM supports Linux.

        For IBM Global Services, yes. For Server Group's blade series, yes. For Software Group, hell no. Where is the Lotus Notes client that runs on anything but Windows?

        For a long time IBM dumped money into propriatory software. Once the platform was antiquated, so was their software, and so the millions of dollars of money they put into their own closed source software is a dead end in just a few years. For all the mainframes, database software, developement software, power series, x86, etc etc etc . All these can be fuffilled by Linux. A open source software OS can provide all the functionality that they NEED.

        No. z/OS has far more capabilities in the traditional business-oriented mainframe space than Linux at present, and it's stupid for IBM to try to push a Unix-like OS into a tightly-controlled mainframe environment. IBM *is* pushing Linux-on-mainframe as a consolidated web hosting environment, but IBM has no plans to kill z/OS.

        No more dumping billions of lines of code into various bits of software that don't integrate and will be obsolete in 3 years. Linux has the potential, thru it's system design and open-ness and flexiblity to never go obsolete.. It'll just change with the times.

        Not really. First, *lots* of IBM's software never exits the lab, and much that does dies a nasty death in the market. (See Tivoli for dozens of examples.) Second, IBM is riding the Linux bandwagon simply because *it has to* in order to survive.

        Plus IBM would like to see Linux on the desktop, so they can basicly tell microsoft to fuck themselves when time comes.

        No they don't. If they did they would port Lotus Notes (IBM's flagship desktop application) to Linux.

        Sensationalist headlines like "cost IBM 10 million dollars to produce" is misleading.

        IBM doesn't give a flying fuck how much money it cost to make it.

        IBM does care, a lot, about how much it costs to build something. Let me tell you an IBM internal secret: Eclipse was meant to take down *MS Visual Studio* back in *2000*. Yes, IBM was hoping that Eclipse would *outsell* VS, and when that obviously couln't happen IBM turned it into a marketing win. And lest we forget history already: it took several months of open-source activity before Eclipse was usable by the masses.

        Say you spent 100,000 dollars on a Windows solution. You have found out now that a Linux solution costing 2000 dollars can do what you want, and better...

        A intellegent person will go with the money making sceme and dump the money pit. A stupid person will be blinded by the sacrifice and stick with the old solution because they can't think clearly.

        An intelligent person will evaluate the total business cost of that solution, and ask themselves if they have enough in-house experience to run the Linux solution with the same apparent reliability as the Windows solution. If you've got some *nix talent in-house, the switch is worth it. If you don't have that talent, then the *one-time* cost of $98,000 is more than offset by the continual cost of a new full-time salary.

        Think about this: I could go with a cheapo MS MS SQL setup for my company or a expensive IBM database.

        Or you could look at the "free" open-source database and cut both Microsoft and IBM out of the picture.

        Because it works 99.99995% of the time, an
        • > IBM is NOT here to promote Linux or save the world.

          That might not be their motivation, but it might be the *exact* reason why God created IBM.
    • Good will in the geek community, free publicity for something that would have just laid around collecting dust otherwise, and maybe a $10 million tax deduction for donating to a non-profit. Not sure about the tax deduction, but this is a donation to a charitable organization, and you can deduct the value of what you donate to these organizations, such as the value of a used car.
    • IBM's charisma +3 in my book, not that I had a problem with them before :)

      I'd love to get my house wired star trek style, and now (hopefully) this is one less issue I need worry about... where to find reliable open source voice recognition
    • Why is it doing this

      I'm sure that this post will get modded as "flamebait" or "troll" but, from my own experience using ViaVoice, this looks more like yea ole "instead of admitting that our product is a failure, we'll just turn it into a marketing coup by releasing it as open source" strategy.

      I purchased ViaVoice about a year or so ago as an add on to a digital recorder for my wife. My wife followed all the instructions very carefully. She went through the training phase and would always speak very s

  • That means one ore thing missing in linux gone? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drmancini ( 712059 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:09AM (#10234109) Homepage
    When you look at GNU/Linux as a complex system and think of the things that users complain about when Linux usability is concerned, GPL'd speech recognition software is definitely one of them.

    Hooray for IBM and as Ali said in the Linux ad "don't back down"!!

  • Viable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tuxter ( 809927 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:14AM (#10234138) Journal
    Is voice recognition software really viable? When you take into account the different accents, dialect and slang, is it just a pipe dream? Is it a software or hardware related issue?
    • >Is voice recognition software really viable? When
      >you take into account the different accents,
      >dialect and slang, is it just a pipe dream? Is it a
      >software or hardware related issue?

      the real problem is propably the different voices. the others i can live without.. ( besides it's good for my mind to be able to say some *()$#% dialect that the computer won't understand )

    • Re:Viable (Score:2, Informative)

      by Metryq ( 716104 )
      I've run into some very slick voice recognition software -- some of it is in use on telephone navigation systems (rather than having to punch a number). Considering the world-wide nature of one company I found using this, it must be very reliable. (The person I finally ended up talking to said that the system rarely stumbles.)
      • I've run into some very slick voice recognition software -- some of it is in use on telephone navigation systems (rather than having to punch a number). Considering the world-wide nature of one company I found using this, it must be very reliable. (The person I finally ended up talking to said that the system rarely stumbles.)

        Verizon Business Internet unit uses voice recognition for their first level of the help system. It asks for your account number (say or key it in) and then attempts to ask you abou

    • Re:Viable (Score:3, Interesting)

      by notthepainter ( 759494 )
      Yes and no.

      I used to work for MacSpeech, we also did large vocabulary dictation systems like ViaVoice.

      Back when I was there it really wasn't viable for most people.

      However, not all people can type, this includes both the "Hands Free" market (disabilities) and the "Hands Busy" market. Surprisingly, many people also don't want to type, this includes medical and legal professionals. They have an interesting problem, they often need to generate large amounts of boilerplate text quickly. Doctors, Radiolo

    • In theory, it's a software issue. In practice, I haven't even been able to get my microphone working in Linux well enough to use Skype.

    • More than viable. Call Amtrak and get a few train schedules. :-)

  • Around 2 decades late... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:16AM (#10234145) Homepage
    ...if only computers (namely Macs) had this technology back in the 80's our favourite 23rd century engineering hero wouldn't have had so much trouble using one at the plexiglass plant [entopia2002.com]. "Hellooooo computer". Still cracks me up.

  • Human-Centered Computing! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Milo Fungus ( 232863 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:21AM (#10234174)

    My brother (who works for IBM) recently sent me an article on USA Today [usatoday.com] about the system IBM and Honda have developed for speech-interface with a GPS-enabled navigation computer. Really cool stuff.

    For those of you who haven't read it, check out The Unfinished Revolution [harpercollins.com] by Michael Dertouzos. I don't agree with all of his analysis (he was a little lacking in pragmatism on some points), but overall this book was very insightful. This book, along with Weaving the Web [w3.org] by Tim Berners-Lee, caused a big paradigm shift in my thinking about computer technology.

  • Code or training? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SWroclawski ( 95770 ) <serge@wroclGIRAF ... minus herbivore> on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:21AM (#10234176) Homepage
    In the late 90s I talked with an IBM representative about releasing the ViaVoice source under a Free Software license and the person I talked to (I don't recall his name) said that they might be willing to release the source code- the code wasn't valuable to them. The value in the ViaVoice is the "thousands of hours of training" that the code uses to determine words and voices.

    So my question is- will the code released include training to make it work and or will someone be able to put together the necessary resources to train the system.

    • Re:Code or training? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:40AM (#10234288) Journal
      Maybe set up sort of a ViaVoice@Home project where every geek can help training the software?
      Actually it should be quite easy: The client reads your keyboard and the microphone, and you are supposed to speak loudly whatever you type. The training results are regularly exchanged with the central server.
      • In the training sessions I've taken part in (at the IBM TJ Watson Research lab) they give us scripts to read. Sessions take place with various amounts of background noise (sound-proof room, over a telephone, in the cafeteria, in a car).

        And they give us a free lunch coupon afterwards. Will read script for food. :-)

      • Yes, while it's technically possible to make this a sort of distributed project, it would require a lot of work. Even beyond the technical "get voices recorded", the trick in training is to know what needs to be recorded and how to train the system with the data.

        Anyone whose ever worked with a netural network can tell you that real training is a sort of half skill half art. Even assuming you can get all the people to read the script (a big undertaking but certainly doable), you'd have to know how to train

  • psh (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They'll never do better than Microsoft Sam!

    Oh...this is voice recognition...umm...let me revise.

    They'll never be able to understand Microsoft Sam!

  • HTK is already availabale as open source (Score:5, Informative)

    by virtigex ( 323685 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:24AM (#10234193)
    From the article, it looks like they are making their network grammar version available, not their dictation grammar version. There are types of continuous speech recognition engines, the simple version that uses a hand-crafted network grammar (which seems to be the version that they are talking about), which can be used to recognize simple utterances such as dates, and one that uses a statictical language model and which can recognize an entire language.

    This is not earth-shattering news, since HTK has been available for some years. HTK was owned by a company called Entropic and was released as open source when it was bought by Microsoft. HTK can be found at http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk/ [cam.ac.uk]. and can handle network grammars. This lessens the impact of IBM's news.

    • Re:HTK is NOT availabale as open source (Score:5, Informative)

      by bonniot ( 633930 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:48AM (#10234361) Homepage Journal
      I was suspicious about MS releasing anything under an Open Source license, so I checked. From HTK's license: [cam.ac.uk]

      2.1 The Licensor hereby grants the Licensee a non-exclusive license to a) make copies of the Licensed Software in source and object code form for use within the Licensee's organisation; b) modify copies of the Licensed Software to create derivative works thereof for use within the Licensee's organisation.

      2.2 The Licensed Software either in whole or in part can not be distributed or sub-licensed to any third party in any form.

      This license is in no way Open Source [opensource.org]. Yes, you can play with the source, but you cannot build something useful with it and redistribute under the same license.

    • Sphinx [sourceforge.net] is a speaker-independent large vocabulary continuous speech recognizer under Berkeley's style license. It is also a collection of open source tools and resources that allows researchers and developers to build speech recognition system.

      FreeTTS [sourceforge.net] is a speech synthesizer written entirely in the Java programming language.

    • > This lessens the impact of IBM's news.
      I don't know about that. Checking out the HTK license shows the following:

      Can I build & sell products based on HTK3? You may build a product but you are not allowed to redistribute (parts of) HTK3, i.e. you can't ship shrink-wrap boxes with products that contain HTK3 code.
      That's no where close to a license providing freedom. It'll be interesting to see what license IBM picks.

  • Eclipse licensing (Score:2, Informative)

    by beef3k ( 551086 )
    It is also worth noting that the Eclipse Foundation recently introduced the Eclipse Public License [eclipse.org], and are in the process of transitioning all code from the CPL to the EPL.

    All new contributions will be under the EPL, so if IBM wants to donate anything to the Eclipse project it will be under this license.

  • Nice M$-Comment at the end (Score:5, Interesting)

    by echappement ( 813006 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @07:29AM (#10234218) Homepage
    Nice title;
    Speech code from IBM to become open source

    And even better.. the comment from Microsoft, quoted at the end of the article
    "IBM has not executed in bringing this technology to a broad market as Microsoft has."

    Beside the jokes; The article states as well that Microsoft introduced their Speech Server 2004 last March, and that 100,000 software programmers have downloaded Microsoft's free software developers' kit for building speech applications on its Windows .Net technology. What exactly is the difference in quality and approach between the package from M$ and the one here mentioned from IBM ?
    • With IBM's new donation, you could build a peice of consumer hardware that plugs into a wall socket & a phone line and runs your voice applications over the phone.

      You could build 10,000 boxes and sell them around the world without any licensing fees.

      That is somewhat different from a solution developed with Microsoft Speech Server 2004.
      • With IBM's new donation, you could build a peice of consumer hardware that plugs into a wall socket & a phone line and runs your voice applications over the phone.

        You could build 10,000 boxes and sell them around the world without any licensing fees.

        That is somewhat different from a solution developed with Microsoft Speech Server 2004.

        Afraid not. IBM is open sourcing 2 things, neither of which is their speech recognition engine. One is just a JSP library, with some tags for generating voicexml f

  • Sphinx (Score:5, Informative)

    by agentk ( 74906 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @08:24AM (#10234669)
    Hmm, this is nice, but I was never impressed by ViaVoice. Sphinx [sf.net] is much better to work with.

    Reed

    • Re:Sphinx (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tigersha ( 151319 )
      How does Sphinx and ViaVoice compare? I am seriously thinking of playing with these two thingies but I would like to have some kind of a opinion fro a serious user.

      Thanks.

  • This is an example of speech recognition not voice.

    Voice recognition is identifiying an individual by there voice. Example: movie Sneakers which any good geek should have seen. "My voice is my passport, verify."

    Speech recognition is simply trying to identify the words being spoken. Like the lackluster system used by United when you call up to get flight times.
    • I like how you call speech recognition 'simply' trying to identify the words, vs voice recognition which has to identify the individual by their voice.

      Voice recognition is in fact a _lot_ simpler than speech recognition. I worked on a research project about 5 years back which involved voice recognition - it was based on a relatively simple mathematical model, required very little training, and was quite accurate. I wanted to combine it with a speech recognition system (so while someone was using the speech

  • Voice software (Score:5, Funny)

    by RichardX ( 457979 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @09:40AM (#10235496) Homepage
    Modern voice dictation software is pretty good I'm using viavoice now to write this and I find bark bark shaddup I find that it bark bark shut up damnit bark bark don't make me come down there I find that bark bark okay that's it I'm coming down there argh crash thud bark bark bark bark bark bark

  • Beer? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bsartist ( 550317 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @10:24AM (#10235958) Homepage
    Does this mean that speech is now free as in beer?

  • Let me know when they start giving away... (Score:3, Funny)

    by nusratt ( 751548 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:43AM (#10236781) Journal
    ...all of the IBM voice-recognition software I keep getting spammed about, so the spammers lose their incentive.

  • VoiceXML IDE (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gawi ( 123608 )
    I believe IBM is opening Voice Toolkit for WebSphere Studio [ibm.com].

    It's a product based on the Eclipse patform (not a plugin, more a standalone application).

    It's a VoiceXML-oriented IDE. In a nutshell, VoiceXML is a specification that defines how to make a speech recognition (or DTMF) application for the *phone* (not the desktop) using a Web model (that is, exchanging documents over HTTP). The toolkit developped by IBM allows programmers to build call flows graphically, to edit VoiceXML and grammar documents

  • Either way... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Eric Damron ( 553630 )
    "This is a case of IBM following Microsoft," said James Mastan, director of marketing for Microsoft Speech Technologies."

    Maybe. When did IBM come out with ViaVoice? It's been a number of years. They even offered it for Linux for a while. When did Microsoft jump on board? Maybe Mr. Mastan's statement is just bull too.

    Either way, I'm glad to see IBM doing this. Voice recognition enabled programs open's a whole new and exciting frontier for software developer's both on the desktop and in embedded projec

    • Re:Either way... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nah, you're in the completely wrong product division. When people hear "speech recognition", they automatically think of stuff like ViaVoice and DragonDictate. This announcement has _nothing_ to do with software for interfacing with your desktop computer.

      They're talking about their voicexml tools. They're open sourcing some tools for developing voicexml-based speech applications that run in a call center somewhere, replacing "press 1 for this, press 2 for that" with "say the name of a city and state, an

  • In other news, (Score:4, Funny)

    by mbstone ( 457308 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @08:38PM (#10242426)
    Bill Gates announced today that the source code for Microsoft Bob® and Microsoft Clippy®, valued on Microsoft's books at $175 million, has been donated to the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt entity.

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