IBM ViaVoice speech recognition coming to XM Radio

XM Satellite radios may soon be offering speech recognition system that will allow users to change radio stations, adjust volume or even search for the latest traffic reports or stock quotes using voice commands : VoiceBox said that it will use IBM’s ViaVoice software to enable the functionality in its upcoming "VoiceBox Navigator," which the company said will be integrated into XM devices.

Saying something as simple as, "change to 233" is easy for humans as we assume you want to go to another radio station. We know this because you are talking to the radio and the radio may already be playing another station, say channel 232. ViaVoice guesses the meaning of the spoken word by using probabilities from gathered user studies in how they use the radio.

Older voice recognition was focused on just interpreting sounds and required users to speak slowly and distinctively. Modern programs don’t have such a limitation and actually do best if the user speaks at normal speed. IBM has been in the speech recognition game for a while and their context sensitive ViaVoice product has been sold to consumers in various forms for several years. For enterprise users, IBM also sells their WebSphere Voice Server which can hook into databases and telephone systems.

VoiceBox and XM did not specify how the system will be integrated, nor have they mentioned any information on pricing.