Google’s new voice-recognition search tool for the iPhone has problems understanding Australian accents, leading to some bizarre answers to spoken queries.
Users down under have noticed searches for the word “iPhone” can return pages of results for “priceline”, “mustang” or simply a message saying “try again.”
The number eight becomes a search for “ike”, seven turns into “Clinton”, and don’t even try searching for the number six.
Google recommends the tool, which is available as a free download for the iPhone and iPod Touch in Apple’s Application Store, works best with a North American accent.
Users with Irish, British and Chinese accents successfully demonstrated the voice search application in official Google videos, but reports suggest that this is not so easy in real life.
In the UK, the voice search mistook the word iPhone variously for sex, Einstein and kitchen sink, said the Daily Telegraph.
“I’ve got a traditional Kentish accent and the thing kept on spitting back ridiculous things,” said Roger Ellinson, 26, from Maidstone in Kent, southeastern England.
“I asked it to find my nearest pizza take away and it came back with something about volcanoes,” he said.
A news.com.au test found that the voice search tends to work best with multisyllabic words – it was able to understand “supercalafragilisticexpialadocious” in an Australian accent, yet still had trouble with simple words like fish, lunch, and news.
An Australian search for news returned the following results: movies, mutants, muse, and – with a Kiwi accent – music.
And the phrase “news.com.au” took us to the Russian website for the band Muse.
Google voice search won’t understand Aussie slang like dag, sanger, or bugger. And even the word Australia returns search results for scalia or sharia if you say it like a local.
A Google Australia spokesperson told news.com.au the voice search was modelled on Google’s US phone service, GOOG-411. This is why the voice search feature is turned off by default if downloaded from outside the US, he said, and why it wasn’t promoted locally.
“You can turn it on and play with it, but we know it isn’t as good yet,” he said.
“We don’t have any specific launches to announce, but the speech recognition and understanding will only get better for other accents and jargon as we keep working on it.”
Google is also testing its voice recognition technology to search for key words in video clips.
Until Google releases an Australian voice search, we’ll have to ask our expat friends to help us search, or just type it in.
Source: news.com.au
