Fun with Speech-to-Text

[KevinJ]

So how many of you have played around with the new (to 2.1) Speech-to-Text function? I've actually been using it for a few days since my OTA came through, and it's pretty darn accurate. But I've also been playing around.

I've noticed that it does a great job, unless I'm using an accent, or slang. Then it gives some really funny words. I've used Australian accents, English, Russian, etc. and the results are always hilarious - and they aren't the same each time.

"Put another shrimp on the barbie" came out "Pudding nuts on a barfly"

I've also found that it will give you ####'s for foul language, but sometimes it goes too far. It allows a cute word for a cat, but not for the character in the James Bond film Goldfinger, Ms. Galore (It comes up #### Galore).

Ah, hilarity ensues.

 

[armeddroid]

lol for real...i did say one bad word it spelled it out differently.
i will give you the word it came out with. you can figure it out.
"That dude is so phucked!"
Lmao that **** actually spelled out like that. hahaha
But back to S2T. I really do like it. Especially it recognizes punctuations. Still trying to get that right.

 

[marlopoohbear]

I really like it. It got my faux cuss word.... "flippin" It didn't even put the "G" on the end, it dictated as it was pronounced. Can speech-to-text recognize punctuation? I haven't seen that yet. I do have to speak clearly. Can't run any words together.

 

[unknowndroid]

If you say your punctuation, it will put it in. For example, speak "no way exclamation point" and it will type "no way!". I found this to work with Question mark, Exclamation point, comma, and period. I tried parentheses and quotes/quotation mark, and they didn't seem to work.

 

[BPB]

my biggest issue is having it capitalize letters appropriately like i in a sentence. other than that it works great, better or at least on par with speech recognition programs on my pc. very useful. if we could only train it to our voice it would be eerily accurate!

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[Al Neri]

I was initially very impressed with it. For some reason it does not recognize the word lot when i say it. I tried about 5 times really announciating it and it kept putting in want. Finally I got so angry I said, "Lot, lot ,lot, l-o-t lot." It texted, "want, want, want, l-o-v-e, want".

I also get all curse words as #####.

 

[RW-1]

If you say your punctuation, it will put it in. For example, speak "no way exclamation point" and it will type "no way!". I found this to work with Question mark, Exclamation point, comma, and period. I tried parentheses and quotes/quotation mark, and they didn't seem to work.

Hey! Damn good find there!

That should appease those who are torqued that the comma key was moved, but don't want to turn off s2t to get it back

 

[marlopoohbear]

Wouldn't it be cool if we could add our own words to the speech-to-text dictionary? I want cuss words!!!! LOL

Unknown, thanks for the punctuation tip.

 

[Sweettooth]

I think text to speech is awesome but I think it was VERY immature of them not to include the ability to uncensor profanity. I mean think about it, if you're not adult enough to look past a bad word, then you're probably too young to own a smartphone to begin with. How many of us have been searching for a legitimate website and we came back with a porn site instead? Did you immediately turn of the computer, make a large sign and march in front of Microsoft inc. or whoever, or did you simply ignore it and move on?

I think it's very un-American for me not to be able to speak profane words and have them translated correctly when it is clearly doing so since it's censoring them. Just my opinion.

 

[marlopoohbear]

I think text to speech is awesome but I think it was VERY immature of them not to include the ability to uncensor profanity. I mean think about it, if you're not adult enough to look past a bad word, then you're probably too young to own a smartphone to begin with. How many of us have been searching for a legitimate website and we came back with a porn site instead? Did you immediately turn of the computer, make a large sign and march in front of Microsoft inc. or whoever, or did you simply ignore it and move on?

I think it's very un-American for me not to be able to speak profane words and have them translated correctly when it is clearly doing so since it's censoring them. Just my opinion.

You're totally right, the software is censoring. We should be able to turn it off. I can censor myself. Am I sending a text to my husband or to my boss? Let me be the judge of when to cuss.

BTW, my "cuss words" spoken into the phone becomes "password". I tried it two times.

On the whole, though, I really like this feature.

 

[KevinJ]

Interesting... I put the "f-word" in the phone's dictionary, but it still showed up as ####.

But another thing I found funny... I just saw an ad on TV for a local station, and so I told the phone I wanted to meet the female anchor (I used her name) - and it spelled it correctly! (She's got a unique name).

BTW, when I say "lot" it types "lot." No problems here for me.

And for the sci-fi fans, is spells "frak" correctly!

 

[rwdfan]

I think text to speech is awesome but I think it was VERY immature of them not to include the ability to uncensor profanity. I mean think about it, if you're not adult enough to look past a bad word, then you're probably too young to own a smartphone to begin with. How many of us have been searching for a legitimate website and we came back with a porn site instead? Did you immediately turn of the computer, make a large sign and march in front of Microsoft inc. or whoever, or did you simply ignore it and move on?

I think it's very un-American for me not to be able to speak profane words and have them translated correctly when it is clearly doing so since it's censoring them. Just my opinion.

Or possibly they decided that it was not worth the time to add a feature that an incredibly small number of people would get upset over. I suspect most people would not consider obscenity a necessity in their text and email.

 

[Romple]

I'd imagine it's more to avoid mistakes going the other way.

"I just picked up my dog Puck!"
send...
"I just picked up my dog ****!"
DOH!

"That song's gonna be a big hit!"
send...
"That song's gonna be a big ****!"
DOH!

censor curses and it completely avoids the issue. Considering how inaccurate S2T can be it's probably a good idea they put in safeguards like that, even if it does mean I can't yell at my annoying friends to **** off and actually be able to send that ;-p

 

[marlopoohbear]

I'd imagine it's more to avoid mistakes going the other way.

"I just picked up my dog Puck!"
send...
"I just picked up my dog ****!"
DOH!

"That song's gonna be a big hit!"
send...
"That song's gonna be a big ****!"
DOH!

censor curses and it completely avoids the issue. Considering how inaccurate S2T can be it's probably a good idea they put in safeguards like that, even if it does mean I can't yell at my annoying friends to **** off and actually be able to send that ;-p

I LOVE your examples! Hilarious. I don't think it's that big of a deal, if I need to add an uncensored cuss word for emphasis, I can type it in. Or use frak or flippin. It's funny to me that we've gotten into a big discussion about using swear words in speech to text.

 

[Sweettooth]

Well if you ask me, dang, dag nabbit, flippin, and all those corny variations are only substitutes for the profanity itself. It's free speech. You say your flippin with the convenience of not having to type it, and maybe that's the way you talk. I'm no foul mouth, but the F word is very universal, I'm an adult, and I know how to censor myself when necessary. I should be able to have the same convenience as you. I'm making a big deal out of this because it's partially the reason I don't use the feature as much as I would. Maybe I want to send a dirty text to my girlfriend while I'm at home and I don't feel like typing it. Talking dirty to your partner isn't profane, it's simply a sign of your feelings, openness, and sexual attraction to one another, one piece to a successful relationship. But I can't do that because Google is censoring my spoken word. Speech-to-Text Fail.

Hope the mods don't get mad but let's put it this way, if I tell a random girl to suck my wang, is that any better than telling her to suck my c**k? Absolutely not. It's still profane. Flippin, dang, frak, and any other variation is nothing more than slipping around the censors and should be met with the dreaded '#' sign's as well if you ask me.

If you say something and it translates it to something else, why would you send that? Learn to check your spelling and grammar. Really I don't mean to sound like I'm griping but if you believe in something you'll defend it to the death, and one thing I'm personally against is being censored. This forum does it too and while I really don't like it, I suppose it's for the best, likely to prevent all out flaming.

With that being said, grow up Google (...and/or Moto and/or Verizon) and shove your '#' signs up your...###? (in the event they're used for censorship)

By the way, I forgot to mention I did spend a good hour talking into the phone just to see the results I got back, as well as seeing if it'd recognize songs that were playing. Google still has a lot of work ahead of them, but there's no denying it's a sweet feature.

*Edited for KevinJ lol