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Apple Wants Siri to be Your New Receptionist

posted by takyon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the talking-to-strangers dept.

fliptop writes:

Apple is testing a service that will let Siri answer, record and transcribe your calls:

Apple's iCloud service will then send you the text of the transcribed voicemail — meaning that you'll never need to listen to your voicemails again.

[...] Here is how it works: When someone using iCloud Voicemail is unable to take a call, Siri will answer instead of letting the call go to a standard digital audio recorder.

iCloud Voicemail can relay information about where you are and why you can't pick up the phone to certain people. But the coolest feature of the service is that Siri will transcribe any incoming voicemails, just like it does with anything else you say to it.

Since they're replicating a service that carriers already provide, could this be another indication Apple is looking to become its own cellular carrier?

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:56AM (#217873)

    Why would I want to convert voice to text, thereby possibly introducing subtle errors as well as throwing away any non-verbal information that may be contained in the message? If someone wanted to leave me a text message, he'd know how to do that.

    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:08PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:08PM (#217879)

      It's searchable, and messages can be reviewed without bothering others (like in a meeting, or in a noisy environment). There's also no reason you can't keep the audio as an attachment. There are other providers that have been doing this stuff for years, this is just Apple playing catch-up. It really is quite useful for those that still use voice to any degree.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by spxero on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:44PM

        by spxero (3061) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:44PM (#217906)

        I've used Google voice for quite some time now, and I can't think of one voicemail that read the same as the audio message itself. Some are bad enough they can't be transcribed. There are quite a few that have enough context clues in the transcription to give an idea of what's going on, but it's far from 100%, or even 75% for that matter.

        • (Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:38PM

          by iwoloschin (3863) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:38PM (#217926)

          It's never 100% correct, but it's often close enough to get the idea, or to know it's a spam voicemail that I can safely delete. I don't need my visual voicemail to be entirely accurate, just close enough so that I know what action I need to take.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by scruffybeard on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:46PM

          by scruffybeard (533) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:46PM (#217931)

          My experience has been much closer to the 75-85% mark, especially if you learn to read the messages phonetically. Perhaps I am not a typical user, but I am just looking for the gist of what the person wants, and determine how quickly I need to respond. Since I don't bring my phone to work, having the messages transcribed, and emailed is an added bonus.

          The question in my mind is what took Apple so long? This is functionality that has been available for a few years now. Am I missing something?

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:12PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @04:12PM (#217965)

          Ever have to replay a voice-mail in order to figure out what the caller actually said?

          That's your own ears making a transcription error. You are just used to dealing with it so it is unremarkable to you.

      • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:56PM

        by isostatic (365) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:56PM (#217914) Journal

        Agreed, and in addition a 2 minute second voice mail can be parsed in 10 seconds.

        I turned voicemail off when work moved me to Vodafone from O2, as Vodafone don't even have visual voicemail -- it's like something from 1997, no way to see who's left you a mail, when, how long it is, etc. Ridiculous.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @02:29PM (#217923)
      As well as give Apple a transcript of all your conversations. Why would I want that? Is there an automatic forwarding of the transcript to the NSA? Or do they already do voice-to-text and Apple is just playing catch up? :))

    • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:35PM

      by dyingtolive (952) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:35PM (#218054)

      Well, it jerked fork Google Voice, so guy hadn't while applesauce too?

      -Transcribed through Google Voice

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @12:19PM (#217883)

    With this product and a projector directed at a suitably large building, passers-by could read transcripts of interesting messages that arrive on one's mobile.

    However, consider how much more entertaining it would be were it voice-to-text-to-voice, with Max Headroom [youtube.com] reading the transcripts. A monstrous Bluetooth speaker would need to accompany the projection kit, but we all have those already, don't we?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @01:44PM (#217907)

    Does anyone know of any offline text to voice software I can get for free? Ideally open source as well. It doesn't even need to be very good.