Abstract: A spoken language understanding (SLU) system may include an automatic speech recognizer (ASR), an audio feature extractor, an optional synchronizer and a language understanding module. The ASR may produce a first set of input data representing transcripts of utterances. The audio feature extractor may produce a second set of input data representing audio features of the utterances, in particular, non-transcript specific characteristics of the speaker in one or more portions the utterances. The two sets of input data may be provided for the language understanding module to predict intents and slot labels for the utterances. The SLU system may use the optional synchronizer to align the two sets of input data before providing them to the language understanding module.

Abstract: A transcription service may receive a request from a developer to build a custom speech-to-text model for a specific domain of speech. The custom speech-to-text model for the specific domain may replace a general speech-to-text model or add to a set of one or more speech-to-text models available for transcribing speech. The transcription service may receive a training data and instructions representing tasks. The transcription service may determine respective schedules for executing the instructions based at least in part on dependencies between the tasks. The transcription service may execute the instructions according to the respective schedules to train a speech-to-text model for a specific domain using the training data set. The transcription service may deploy the trained speech-to-text model as part of a network-accessible service for an end user to convert audio in the specific domain into texts.