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Speech-Activated Technology Does Not Recognize Womens' Voices

By Katie Kelley

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 14Jun2011 Word count: 485 Viewed: 366 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Rebekah Page-Gourley, an attorney from Detroit says she loves everything about her 2012 Ford Focus except for the voice-recognition software it came with. That's because it doesn't recognize her voice.

"I do find myself screaming at it sometimes," says Page-Gourley. "I look like a crazy person screaming at my car."

She's not alone. Many female drivers have trouble with their voice-recognition software in their cars. That's because most voice-recognition software products do not recognize female voices. However, males do not see to have problems with these products.

Car companies are promoting voice-activated-technology as a solution to distracted driving even though it is not reliable for some people. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, drivers are increasingly distracted by the number of gadgets that cause them to look away from the road like MP3 players, GPS systems or cell phones. They believe that distracted driving is behind an increase of fatal accidents. Distracted driving was a factor in 16 percent of all fatal automobile accidents in 2009, up from 10 percent in 2005, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The auto industry says that people will never put away their phones and other devices, so speech-recognition technology is the only option to keep people focused on the road. However, only the most sophisticated systems work properly, and even the best ones have some persistent flaws. The software doesn't work very well for many people like women, people with accents, both international and strong regional accents.

Improvements have been made over the years to existing speech-recognition software products. According to Adam Denison, OnStar spokesman, improvements to the General Motors' system have been made over the past 10 years. Improvements were first made for males, then females, then Midwestern speakers, and finally, for Southern speakers and people from New England. He says that today, the technology can recognize both genders and "nearly all dialects."

Ford says that they have generally overcome the difference between male and female voices by collecting 50 percent more female voice samples than male samples. Doing this helps the software learn what a female voice sounds like as opposed to how a male voice sounds.

Car companies have a big incentive to sell more cars with speech-activated technology. The Department of Transportation has identified distracted driving as one of its top safety concerns.

In an attempt to make voice-activated software products more usable, software developers are trying to make the process more natural. Ideally, drivers would feel like they were talking to a passenger while driving, says Tom Schalk, vice president of voice technology for auto supplier ATX Group.

Schalk says that even if voice-activated technology was mandatory in every car, drivers would still bring in their own devices. They'll continue to talk on their cell phones and twiddling with their GPS systems, taking their eyes off the road, he says.

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