Abstract: Techniques for integrating a virtual assistant into a spoken conversation session, the techniques including receiving an utterance information that expresses an utterance spoken by a first participant included in a plurality of participants of a spoken conversation session; processing the utterance information using at least one machine-trained model to determine an intent or content for a command or query included in the utterance; selectively identifying a recipient subset of one or more of the plurality of participants based on at least the determined intent or content for the utterance; generating a response for the command or query; and providing, during the spoken conversation session, the response to the identified recipient subset.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, from a client device that corresponds to a user of an online social network, an input that comprises free-form text; determining, through application of natural-language processing of the free-form text, an affinity declaration for an object associated with the online social network; determining an affinity coefficient between respective user and the object; adjusting the determined affinity coefficient based on social-networking information of the user, wherein the social-networking information reinforces or reduces the determined affinity coefficient; and upon determining that the determined affinity coefficient is above a threshold coefficient, creating or modifying an edge connection in a social graph between a user node corresponding to the user and a concept node corresponding to the object.

Abstract: Devices, systems and methods are disclosed for estimating a prior probability for speech recognition by taking into account a number of observations of a particular word and a prior probability for a group of words having a similar number of observations. For example, a prior probability may be determined by combining a number of correct results and a number of observations for a group of words and calculating a prior probability of the entire group. Further, a prior probability may be determined for a word that was not previously observed by determining a prior probability for a group of words that have been observed once. The prior probability for a particular word may be determined differently as the number of observations increases and may transition from the group prior probability to an individual prior probability when the number of observations exceeds a threshold.

Abstract: A terminal comprises: a speech receiving unit that receives speech in a locked state; a voiceprint authentication unit that performs voiceprint authentication based on the speech received in the locked state and determining whether or not a user is legitimate; a speech recognition unit that performs speech recognition of the speech received in the locked state; and an execution unit that executes an application using a result of the speech recognition.

Abstract: Speech generating devices, communication systems, and methods for communicating using the devices and systems are disclosed herein. In certain examples, the speech generating device includes a display device and an input device configured to generate a communication to be displayed on the display device, wherein the speech generating device is configured to allow a user to select between playing the generated communication through a speaker and transmitting the generated communication via a communication network to a computing device separate from the speech generating device. In certain examples, the computing device may be designated with other computing devices of other conversation partners within a conversation group.

Abstract: A terminal comprises: a speech receiving unit that receives speech in a locked state; a voiceprint authentication unit that performs voiceprint authentication based on the speech received in the locked state and determining whether or not a user is legitimate; a speech recognition unit that performs speech recognition of the speech received in the locked state; and an execution unit that executes an application using a result of the speech recognition.

Abstract: A system for determining an endpoint of an utterance during automatic speech recognition (ASR) processing that accounts for the direction and duration of the incoming speech. Beamformers of the ASR system may identify a source direction of the audio. The system may track the duration speech has been received from that source direction so that if speech is detected in another direction, the original source speech may be weighted differently for purposes of determining an endpoint of the utterance. Speech from a new direction may be discarded or treated like non-speech for purposes of determining an endpoint of speech from an original direction.

Abstract: An automatic speech recognition (ASR) system detects an endpoint of an utterance using the active hypotheses under consideration by a decoder. The ASR system calculates the amount of non-speech detected by a plurality of hypotheses and weights the non-speech duration by the probability of each hypotheses. When the aggregate weighted non-speech exceeds a threshold, an endpoint may be declared.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a system and method for bootstrapping templates for use in natural language sentence generation. More specifically, the present invention relates to identifying a set of candidate sentences from a large corpus based on a set of original templates by using a similarity measure. The set of candidate sentences are then processed or cleaned to generate a set of templates for use in natural language sentence generation.

Abstract: A system and method of changing features of an existing automatic speech recognition (ASR) system includes: monitoring speech received from a vehicle occupant for one or more keywords identifying a feature to remove from or add to the ASR system; detecting the keywords in the monitored speech; and adding the identified feature to or removing the identified feature from from the ASR system.

Abstract: Data associated with a selectively offline capable voice action is locally persisted in a voice-enabled electronic device whenever such an action cannot be competed locally due to the device being offline to enable the action to later be completed after online connectivity has been restored. Synchronization with an online service and/or another electronic device, and/or retrieval of context sensitive data from an online service may be performed after online connectivity has been restored to enable the voice action to thereafter be completed.

Abstract: A voice recognition terminal, a voice recognition server, and a voice recognition method for performing personalized voice recognition. The voice recognition terminal includes a feature extraction unit for extracting feature data from an input voice signal, an acoustic score calculation unit for calculating acoustic model scores using the feature data, and a communication unit for transmitting the acoustic model scores and state information to a voice recognition server in units of one or more frames, and receiving transcription data from the voice recognition server, wherein the transcription data is recognized using a calculated path of a language network when the voice recognition server calculates the path of the language network using the acoustic model scores.

Abstract: The present invention makes it possible to see an original text string which (i) is contained in a captured image and (ii) has been translated, even after a translation of the original text string is displayed. The text string decoration display control section (12) decorates a part indicating a text string contained in a captured image and causes the decorated part to be displayed. The translation image generating section (13) generates a translation image showing a result of translating the text string into another language. The translation display control section (16) switches between display and non-display of the translation image in accordance with an input carried out by a user.

Abstract: Techniques for indicating to a voice-controlled device that a user is going to provide a voice command to the device. In response to receiving such an indication, the device may prepare to process an audio signal based on sound captured by a microphone of the device for the purpose of identifying the voice command from the audio signal. For instance, a user may utilize a signaling device that includes a button that, when actuated, sends a signal that is received by the voice-controlled device. In response to receiving the signal, a microphone of the voice-controlled device may capture sound that is proximate to the voice-controlled device and may create an audio signal based on the sound. The voice-controlled device may then analyze the audio signal for a voice command of the user or may provide the audio signal to a remote service for identifying the command.

Abstract: Techniques disclosed herein include systems and methods for open-domain voice-enabled searching that is speaker sensitive. Techniques include using speech information, speaker information, and information associated with a spoken query to enhance open voice search results. This includes integrating a textual index with a voice index to support the entire search cycle. Given a voice query, the system can execute two matching processes simultaneously. This can include a text matching process based on the output of speech recognition, as well as a voice matching process based on characteristics of a caller or user voicing a query. Characteristics of the caller can include output of voice feature extraction and metadata about the call. The system clusters callers according to these characteristics. The system can use specific voice and text clusters to modify speech recognition results, as well as modifying search results.

Abstract: The present disclosure provides a lighting device and related voice broadcasting systems and methods. The lighting device includes a light-emitting module configured to provide lighting, a process and control module, a memory module configured to store audio contents stored in a local memory and downloaded from the Internet, and a voice input module configured to receive voice information from users. The process and control module is configured to receive voice information from the voice input module, to recognize and determine whether the voice information is a voice command, and to send control instructions to a corresponding module according to the matched voice command. A voice output module is configured to select and play a audio content according to the control instructions sent from the process and control module.

Abstract: A system for use in a vehicle having a selected vehicle language, the system comprising image capture means for capturing an image scene external to the vehicle, wherein the image scene includes one or more information indicator including text in a country language other than the selected vehicle language. A means is provided for outputting a vehicle language signal representative of the selected vehicle language to an off-board server; and a means is provided for outputting a country language signal to the off-board server which is representative of the country language. A means is also provided for outputting the text to the off-board server for translation from the country language into the vehicle language; together with means for receiving a translated text output from the off-board server which is representative of the translated text. A means is provided for communicating the translated text output to the vehicle user.

Abstract: Systems and processes are disclosed for handling a multi-part voice command for a virtual assistant. Speech input can be received from a user that includes multiple actionable commands within a single utterance. A text string can be generated from the speech input using a speech transcription process. The text string can be parsed into multiple candidate substrings based on domain keywords, imperative verbs, predetermined substring lengths, or the like. For each candidate substring, a probability can be determined indicating whether the candidate substring corresponds to an actionable command. Such probabilities can be determined based on semantic coherence, similarity to user request templates, querying services to determine manageability, or the like. If the probabilities exceed a threshold, the user intent of each substring can be determined, processes associated with the user intents can be executed, and an acknowledgment can be provided to the user.

Abstract: A voice to text model used by a voice-enabled electronic device is dynamically and in a context-sensitive manner updated to facilitate recognition of entities that potentially may be spoken by a user in a voice input directed to the voice-enabled electronic device. The dynamic update to the voice to text model may be performed, for example, based upon processing of a first portion of a voice input, e.g., based upon detection of a particular type of voice action, and may be targeted to facilitate the recognition of entities that may occur in a later portion of the same voice input, e.g., entities that are particularly relevant to one or more parameters associated with a detected type of voice action.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a method includes receiving free-form text from users of an online social network, wherein the free-form text of each input corresponds to an object associated with the online social network; determining a plurality of affinity declarations from the free-form text that are associated with the object; determining, for each affinity declaration, an affinity coefficient between a respective user and the object; and upon determining that the affinity coefficient for a threshold number of users exceeds a threshold value, creating a page associated with the object for display on the online social network.