4 ms·

This is really, really unfortunate. One of the last on-device speech companies is being bought out and moved into Microsoft's cloud division. Expect nobody to b

This is really, really unfortunate. One of the last on-device speech companies is being bought out and moved into Microsoft's cloud division. Expect nobody to be willing to sell you speech recognition without a cloud subscription now.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
You don't know their roadmap or plans for Nuance yet you attribute motive.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Microsoft's focus here is pretty well known: They've retired the Windows Speech SDK almost entirely in favor of Azure services, which is where the Microsoft Speech team has moved to, and the announcement explicitly stated Microsoft is bringing this under their "Intelligent Cloud" segment.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    They claimed two things. That this would be exclusively cloud and that nobody will sell you speech recognition without a subscription. I doubt this is all.
lunixbochs 6y ago
I'm in the on-device space, here's a recent demo of my engine for a niche use case (it also does large vocabulary dictation very well): https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896 https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I'll take a look! I am still looking for the right speech recognition setup for my needs. I wrote an app that largely expects text input of the spoken command, and I'd ideally like to have hotword detection + speech recognition that can be set up to output the detected command to my own software.
  - lunixbochs 6y ago
    What are you building?
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      I have been hacking on a home automation controller (that isn't particularly well written, to be honest) for a number of years, and voice is one area I do not want to have to figure out how to write myself. I am a bit concerned about having to heavily integrate with a model that requires I explicitly build sentence patterns in their software, because it'd lock me in pretty heavily to that solution. (My wife has been using Dragon for dictation heavily lately, so that's a use-case that is intriguing to me as well, especially if today's announcement means the death of the Dragon product line in the near future.)
Godel_unicode 6y ago
C+AI makes products that can work offline though (yes it has the words Azure and cloud, no they aren't required): https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/with-azure-percept-microsoft-adds-new-ways-for-customers-to-bring-ai-to-the-edge/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/with-azure-percept-microsoft-...
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  The blog claims that it is so devices can continue to work when it's offline, not that it didn't use Azure when it was online, and also that the devices are intended to by deployed via Azure IoT Hub. Which is to say, the blog doesn't make it sound like I can use this without an Azure subscription, even if it works offline sometimes. Whereas the Microsoft Speech SDK, I could just include the DLL files and run with it.
athenot 6y ago
Nuance has grown through acquisitions. They basically bought up technologies and slapped a common name on them. But each one retained its one oddities. So you configure one product with INI-style files, another one with XML files, a module within that one is configured with text files using configuration codes... it's a royal pain in the behind. Hopefully Microsoft will eventually unify these apis and configurations into something coherent.
- brainzap 6y ago
  like they did with Azure? xD
kkielhofner 6y ago
Not quite "on device" but Microsoft Azure provides Speech Cognitive Services as containers that you can run in your local environment: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/speech-container-howto?tabs=stt%2Ccsharp%2Csimple-format https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/sp... I believe Google Cloud Platform has something similar available (not sure about AWS).
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I use desktop PCs as my "device", so hardware power isn't really an issue here, but the fact that it's still usage priced would be the big issue.
whimsicalism 6y ago
On the flip side, the open source tech has gotten good enough that you can basically roll your own now.
throwawaysea 6y ago
I agree. Even though acquiring is a good strategy for Microsoft to an extent, it is also a problem to see continued consolidation. How can anyone hope to compete against these giants in the same product segments? They have unlimited cheap capital and the ability to integrate an acquired product into the rest of their products. Then there's the issue of intellectual property and continued building of patent war chests. If one of these companies copies your innovative feature, you will have no recourse to sue them because they'll be sitting on a mountain of random mundane patents. The fact that these companies can make $20B acquisitions itself feels broken from a healthy market perspective.
rllearneratwork 6y ago
plenty open-source options are available. Checkout https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo
yosito 6y ago
Are you saying this discussion calls for some nuance?

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

You don't know their roadmap or plans for Nuance yet you attribute motive.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Microsoft's focus here is pretty well known: They've retired the Windows Speech SDK almost entirely in favor of Azure services, which is where the Microsoft Speech team has moved to, and the announcement explicitly stated Microsoft is bringing this under their "Intelligent Cloud" segment.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  They claimed two things. That this would be exclusively cloud and that nobody will sell you speech recognition without a subscription. I doubt this is all.

lunixbochs 6y ago

I'm in the on-device space, here's a recent demo of my engine for a niche use case (it also does large vocabulary dictation very well): https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896 https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1378159234861264896

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I'll take a look! I am still looking for the right speech recognition setup for my needs. I wrote an app that largely expects text input of the spoken command, and I'd ideally like to have hotword detection + speech recognition that can be set up to output the detected command to my own software.
- lunixbochs 6y ago
  What are you building?
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I have been hacking on a home automation controller (that isn't particularly well written, to be honest) for a number of years, and voice is one area I do not want to have to figure out how to write myself. I am a bit concerned about having to heavily integrate with a model that requires I explicitly build sentence patterns in their software, because it'd lock me in pretty heavily to that solution. (My wife has been using Dragon for dictation heavily lately, so that's a use-case that is intriguing to me as well, especially if today's announcement means the death of the Dragon product line in the near future.)

Godel_unicode 6y ago

C+AI makes products that can work offline though (yes it has the words Azure and cloud, no they aren't required): https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/with-azure-percept-microsoft-adds-new-ways-for-customers-to-bring-ai-to-the-edge/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/with-azure-percept-microsoft-...

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
The blog claims that it is so devices can continue to work when it's offline, not that it didn't use Azure when it was online, and also that the devices are intended to by deployed via Azure IoT Hub. Which is to say, the blog doesn't make it sound like I can use this without an Azure subscription, even if it works offline sometimes. Whereas the Microsoft Speech SDK, I could just include the DLL files and run with it.

athenot 6y ago

Nuance has grown through acquisitions. They basically bought up technologies and slapped a common name on them. But each one retained its one oddities. So you configure one product with INI-style files, another one with XML files, a module within that one is configured with text files using configuration codes... it's a royal pain in the behind. Hopefully Microsoft will eventually unify these apis and configurations into something coherent.

brainzap 6y ago
like they did with Azure? xD

kkielhofner 6y ago

Not quite "on device" but Microsoft Azure provides Speech Cognitive Services as containers that you can run in your local environment: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/speech-container-howto?tabs=stt%2Ccsharp%2Csimple-format https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/sp... I believe Google Cloud Platform has something similar available (not sure about AWS).

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I use desktop PCs as my "device", so hardware power isn't really an issue here, but the fact that it's still usage priced would be the big issue.

whimsicalism 6y ago

On the flip side, the open source tech has gotten good enough that you can basically roll your own now.

throwawaysea 6y ago

I agree. Even though acquiring is a good strategy for Microsoft to an extent, it is also a problem to see continued consolidation. How can anyone hope to compete against these giants in the same product segments? They have unlimited cheap capital and the ability to integrate an acquired product into the rest of their products. Then there's the issue of intellectual property and continued building of patent war chests. If one of these companies copies your innovative feature, you will have no recourse to sue them because they'll be sitting on a mountain of random mundane patents. The fact that these companies can make $20B acquisitions itself feels broken from a healthy market perspective.

rllearneratwork 6y ago

plenty open-source options are available. Checkout https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo

yosito 6y ago

Are you saying this discussion calls for some nuance?