"In restricted grammar mode" That's a key limitation, though. But we're getting close to the point where you can do some of this. For example - http://arxiv.

"In restricted grammar mode" That's a key limitation, though. But we're getting close to the point where you can do some of this. For example - http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03185.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03185.pdf - LSTM speech recognition running on a Nexus 5. The more serious problem with this is that it's going to be expensive -- and somewhat wasteful. There's a lot of pressure to keep consumer devices as cheap as possible, and the cloud is an awesome way to do that. Having shared cloud-based infrastructure for the speech recognition as opposed to putting it into every device (even though it's only used for ~5 minutes every day) is probably a lot cheaper. Consider the hardware in an Amazon Echo: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Amazon+Echo+Teardown/33953 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Amazon+Echo+Teardown/33953 256MB DRAM and a TI DSP: http://www.ti.com/product/dm3725 http://www.ti.com/product/dm3725 with a single Cortex-A8 core (about $23 + a smidgeon for the dram) vs. a Nexus 5 (2GB DRAM, 4 core 2.2Ghz Krait 400) -- the N5 has roughly 8x the DRAM and compute of the CPU in the Echo. Would you pay an extra $150 for a LocalEcho that still had to send most of your queries to a search engine for resolution, or to a cloud music service for music? (You & I might, but most consumers wouldn't.)