{"id":3415,"date":"2018-08-16T09:43:44","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T05:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2018-08-16T09:43:44","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T05:43:44","slug":"smart-digital-assistants-threaten-regional-accents-research-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/08\/16\/smart-digital-assistants-threaten-regional-accents-research-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart digital assistants threaten regional accents, research says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Proud Geordies, Scousers and\u00a0Glaswegians beware. Accents from all\u00a0the corners of Britain are under threat from\u00a0the rising popularity\u00a0of personal digital assistants, according to new research.<\/p>\n

People with strong regional twangs and lilts\u00a0are finding themselves reverting to received pronunciation when talking to voice assistants like\u00a0Alexa, Siri or Google in order\u00a0to be better understood, according to a report from the\u00a0Life Science Centre in Newcastle.<\/p>\n

It claims nearly four fifths of speakers with regional accents say they deliberately adjust\u00a0the way they speak in order to prevent hiccups when using voice recognition systems.<\/p>\n

Smart speakers such as Amazon’s Echo have surged in popularity in recent months, becoming a regular fixture in homes around the UK. A recent Ofcom report estimated that 13pc of households now have a smart speaker.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence voice assistants in the speakers, such as Alexa, can listen out for questions or requests.\u00a0Speaking the wake word “Alexa” will launch the speaker, which can be asked to read the news, make a purchase online, play music or answer a question.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Speech recognition systems tend to be less good at local accents because the data used to train them comes from speakers without strong regional accents.<\/q>Dr Laurence White, Newcastle University<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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B<\/span>ut people with thick regional accents often\u00a0find themselves repeating phrases to some smart devices. While voice technology can pick up almost any word on its own, it can easily\u00a0misunderstand\u00a0local accents or be stumped by \u00a0slang.<\/p>\n

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At a glance<\/span>\u00a0| Amazon Echo<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Five things you can do with the Echo<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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  • Control your music by saying \u201cAlexa, play some Adele\u201d without having to pick up your phone or walk over to your laptop<\/li>\n
  • Ask for weather information by saying \u201cAlexa, what\u2019s the weather?\u201d<\/li>\n
  • Get other handy information such as the time and traffic on your commute<\/li>\n
  • Alexa can also help out in the kitchen by answering questions such as \u201cAlexa, set a timer for 25 minutes\u201d<\/li>\n
  • Third-party compatibility with Alexa means that you can order a pizza or book a taxi just by speaking<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n

    According to the Life Science Centre,\u00a079pc of respondents who had an accent said they changed their voice to talk to their personal assistants. Around half said they were worried technology could eventually\u00a0lead to regional accents dying out.<\/p>\n

    “At the moment we have to adapt our voices,” Linda Conlon, chief executive of Life Science Centre told the Telegraph. “Wouldn\u2019t it be great if the machine had the right data sets to second guess the way I\u00a0am going to speak.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    D<\/span>r Laurence White, senior lecturer in speech and language sciences at Newcastle University, said that if people only ever spoke to their devices it would alter their accents in the longer term, although most people tend to return to their accents out of habit.<\/p>\n

    Getting artificial intelligence software to improve its understanding of accents will\u00a0require them to be trained on larger data sets that are tailored for use in different regions. Dr White said: \u201cOff-the-shelf speech recognition systems tend to be less good at local accents because the data that engineers use to train their devices generally come from speakers without strong regional accents.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    W<\/span>ith the booming popularity of smart speakers, people have taken to social media to vent\u00a0their frustrations at being misheard. One viral clip features a woman with a strong Scottish accent asking Alexa to play a song. She is repeatedly ignored, until she speaks in a feigned Cockney accent. Alexa responds immediately.<\/p>\n

    But it is not only the UK’s regional accents that are under threat. The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0reported earlier this year that Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa were around 7pc less accurate at responding\u00a0to Spanish-American accents than they were at responding to West Coast American voices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    A<\/span>nd the challenge of training voice assistants to understand accents is not limited to English. Alexa already “speaks” English, German,\u00a0Japanese and recently added French earlier this year. Amazon introduced test versions of Alexa to workers in its French logistics centres to train it to better understand the nuances of the language. Not only that, but French Alexa went to great lengths to learn local nursery rhymes and add local skills, such as being able to find stories from local newspapers like Le Figaro.<\/p>\n

    “We\u2019ve worked hard to ensure Alexa can understand multiple accents, and\u00a0Alexa is\u00a0designed to get smarter every day,” an Amazon spokesman said.\u00a0“As more people speak to Alexa, with various different accents,\u00a0the more she adapts to speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences.”<\/p>\n

    –<\/p>\n

    Telegraph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Proud Geordies, Scousers and\u00a0Glaswegians beware. Accents from all\u00a0the corners of Britain are under threat from\u00a0the rising popularity\u00a0of personal digital assistants, according to new research. People with strong regional twangs and lilts\u00a0are finding themselves reverting to received pronunciation when talking to voice assistants like\u00a0Alexa, Siri or Google in order\u00a0to be better understood, according to a report …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3417,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions\/3417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}