Voice aware demographic personalization

• US 20080298562A1
• Filed: 06/04/2007
• Published: 12/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/04/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ju, Yun-Cheng, Acero, Alejandro, Zweig, Geoffrey Gerson, Berstein, Neal Alan
• Granted Patent: US 7,949,526 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/88.18
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/005 Language recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 17/26 Recognition of special voice characteristics, e.g. for use in lie detectors; Recognition of animal voices
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/40 using speech recognition speech recognition per se G10L15/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4211 where the identifier is used to access a profile
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4878 Advertisement messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/493 Interactive information services, e.g. directory enquiries ; Arrangements therefor, e.g. interactive voice response [IVR] systems or voice portals

Abstract

A voice interaction system is configured to analyze an utterance and identify inherent attributes that are indicative of a demographic characteristic of the system user that spoke the utterance. The system then selects and presents a personalized response to the user, the response being selected based at least in part on the identified demographic characteristic. In one embodiment, the demographic characteristic is one or more of the caller'"'"'s age, gender, ethnicity, education level, emotional state, health status and geographic group. In another embodiment, the selection of the response is further based on consideration of corroborative caller data.

Claims

1. A voice interaction system, comprising:

a demographic characteristic recognition component configured to identify a demographic characteristic of a user based on analysis of a representation of an utterance spoken by the user;

a response selection component configured to supply a response based at least in part on the demographic characteristic.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the demographic characteristic is age.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the demographic characteristic is gender.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the demographic characteristic is ethnicity.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the demographic characteristic is education level.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the demographic characteristic is mood.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the demographic characteristic is geographic group.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the demographic characteristic is status of health.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a database of supplementary data, wherein the demographic characteristic recognition component is further configured to identify a demographic characteristic of a user based at least in part on caller-specific data stored in the database of supplementary data.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the caller-specific data includes at least one indication of a correlation between a user and a telephone number.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the response is an advertisement.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the response is activation of a software component.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the response is activation of a web-based software component.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the response is activation of a component of an in-vehicle control system.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein the response is activation of a component of an education application.

16. A demographic characteristic recognition component configured to identify a demographic characteristic of a user based on analysis of a representation of an utterance spoken by the user, wherein the identification is further based upon a phone number associated with the user that spoke the utterance.

17. The component of claim 16, wherein the identification is further based upon a collection of profile information associated with the phone number.

18. A computer-implemented method of producing a personalized response from a voice interaction system, the method comprising:

receiving an utterance from a user;

based on inherent qualities of a representation of the utterance, determining a demographic characteristic of the user; and

supplying the personalized response based at least in part on the demographic characteristic.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein determining a demographic characteristic comprises determining multiple demographic characteristics, and wherein supplying comprises supplying based at least on the multiple demographic characteristics.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the demographic characteristic is ethnicity.