Cortana, siri and alexa: how do speech recognition apps work?

Have you ever wondered how voice recognition apps works? Many people believe the software is similar to a phone call. They think that the app records your voice and then sends it to a voice recognition service for interpretation. In reality, there is much more going on behind the scenes.

Speech recognition services can interpret your intent

Speech recognition is a relatively new technology, but it's growing fast. The number of people using voice assistants has grown by 50% in the past year, according to a recent report by Juniper Research. In 2021, the market for smart speakers is expected to reach $40 billion. As these devices become more popular, they're also becoming more useful.

But how do they work? How does my Echo know what I'm asking for? Speech recognition services can interpret your intent and respond accordingly. They can understand what you're saying and then act on it. A few years ago, speech recognition services were limited to specific tasks like sending texts or making calls on smartphones.

But now we have devices like Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod that can listen to us talk about anything from sports scores to cooking instructions — and even do things like pull up Spotify playlists or order pizza from Domino's!

Speech recognition works in the cloud

Cortana, Siri and Alexa are all examples of voice assistants that respond to voice commands. They use speech recognition to understand what you're saying and respond accordingly. The technology behind these apps has come a long way over the years, but it's still nowhere near perfect. Speech recognition software still struggles with accents, background noise, slang and other human quirks that make it hard to understand what someone is saying.

But even though speech recognition isn't perfect, it's getting better all the time — especially in the cloud.

Speech recognition apps are constantly self-improving

Siri, Cortana and Alexa are all great at understanding what you say. But how do they work? Speech recognition has been around for decades, but it's only recently that we've seen it in our phones and homes. We're now able to talk to our devices and have them obey our commands.

But how does this technology actually work? How does it understand what we say? And why can't it understand us when it's raining or we're in a noisy restaurant? The answer lies in the complexity of human speech. The human voice contains so much information that computers struggle to decipher it without help from humans.

It seems like an impossible task – after all, there are millions of different sounds in the English language alone – but speech recognition software uses two main techniques: machine learning and neural networks.

Apps use your input to learn about you

Speech recognition apps are everywhere. On your phone, in your car and even in your home. They're convenient, but how do they work? Speech recognition apps have been around for a long time. The first recording of a computer recognizing spoken words dates back to 1952 and the technology has improved dramatically since then.

These days, speech recognition apps are everywhere. You can talk to your phone to dictate emails or text messages and ask questions about the weather or local restaurants. Your car will tell you where to turn when you're driving and your home can turn on lights or play music when you tell it to do so.

How does it all work? Here's how speech recognition apps work: Apps use machine learning algorithms to train themselves on how users speak App developers create their own algorithms based on how they think people will speak with their app — this is called "training" an app. For example, if they expect users to say "turn off the lights" instead of "lights off," then that's what they'll teach the algorithm first (and often only).

To Sum Up

All of the major speech recognition apps work in pretty much the same way. They’re all constantly listening for a key word of phrase, and once detected, they record what you say next. That data is sent off to a server that then processes it, and sends the appropriate information back to the app.

Finally, the app will read aloud what you said and/or complete any actions that you requested. This system is called cloud-based processing, and it’s incredibly effective once you start using it.