Utter a few commands to
your cellphone to order a pizza with double cheese or trade stocks
on the Nasdaq or buy the latest New York Best Seller; speech
recognition commerce is expected to become a $450-billion industry,
according to Forrester Research.
Where speech recognition and text-to-speech technology is
receiving the most attention is in the automotive industry.
Following New York state’s ban on the use of cellphones while
driving, with the exception of those that are hands-free, automakers
and their suppliers have heightened the rhetoric and promotion of
voice recognition features and options.
Ford Motor Company in conjunction
with Cellport Systems recently introduced a plug-and-play system
that makes any model or make of cellphone voice recognition enabled.
Since January, General Motors’ OnStar telematics service has
been offering over a million subscribers the OnStar Virtual Advisor.
Virtual Advisor subscribers receive customized, Web-based
information through voice recognition and text-to-speech technology.
GM has a strict policy that forbids extraneous screens or buttons
for dashboard communications, thus all OnStar services are
voice-activated and does not require the driver to touch or look at
the display screens. By simply saying, "Getting my Sports
Center Updates" into speakers tucked into the vehicle’s roof,
a driver will automatically receive content from EPSON.com’s
Sports Center, owned by Disney. General Motors recently signed an
agreement with Walt Disney Internet Group to deliver ESPON.com,
Disney.com, and ABCNews.com content to OnStar subscribers.
OnStar also signed on with SpeechWorks to use its Speechify
Text-to-Speech engine for its Virtual Advisor. The Speechify
software will enable subscribers to listen to their e-mail being
read by a pleasant male or female voice.
At present GM is seriously considering including so-called push
advertisements from retailers, banks, movie theatres, and gas
stations. Location-based commercials would be beamed via a wireless
network and override a driver’s stereo system. Whether customers
will accept such interruptions while they are in their vehicles
continues to be debated among industry experts. Some drivers may not
appreciate having their sports report interrupted because they just
drove passed a Starbucks offering a free coffee if purchased within
the next ten minutes. Then again, they might if they could purchase
it by simply saying, "Buying One Tall Caffè Latte" and
then drive by and pick it up.
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