Human-augmented, automatic speech recognition engine
First Claim
1. A speech recognition system, comprising:
- an automatic speech recognition engine;
a module in communication with said speech recognition engine for determining a confidence metric with regard to an utterance presented to said speech recognition engine, and for transmitting said utterance to a human operator for recognition and transcription when said confidence metric is below a predetermined threshold; and
a mechanism for providing said human transcription of said utterance back to said speech recognition engine.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method combines the advantages of automatic speech recognition and human-to-human conversation in a speech recognition engine. Human intervention is used to augment an automatic speech recognition engine. When a confidence metric is low enough, the system transmits an utterance to a human operator. The human then transcribes the text, which is then provided back to the automatic system. In the preferred embodiment, no real time human-to-human conversation ever actually takes place. Thus, the user experience is consistent with automatic, machine speech recognition. A mechanism is also provided for examining voice recognition statistics that are gathered over many users. If there is a high correction rate for a particular word or phrase, the system automatically directs words that are in a potential match list to a human transcriber and makes no independent effort to recognize such words. The speech system learns from such human transcription and improves its speech recognition models or grammar over time, based upon the input from human transcription.
137 Citations
36 Claims
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1. A speech recognition system, comprising:
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an automatic speech recognition engine;
a module in communication with said speech recognition engine for determining a confidence metric with regard to an utterance presented to said speech recognition engine, and for transmitting said utterance to a human operator for recognition and transcription when said confidence metric is below a predetermined threshold; and
a mechanism for providing said human transcription of said utterance back to said speech recognition engine. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
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19. A speech recognition method, comprising the steps of:
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providing an automatic speech recognition engine;
determining a confidence metric with regard to an utterance presented to said speech recognition engine;
transmitting said utterance to a human operator for recognition and transcription when said confidence metric is below a predetermined threshold; and
providing said human transcription of said utterance back to said speech recognition engine.
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Specification