Speech in new generation of user interfaces

Abstract

It is more than 60 years ago when US Department of Defense begun funding the first speech processing projects. First attempts to synthesize and detect voice existed already at that time. General perception was that the machines will soon learn to speak and understand humans. Now, here we are, 60 years later and there are relatively few applications on the market talking to us and willing to listen. What are the reasons for this "slow" progress? Is speech technology really as big of a thing in user interfaces as originally expected? What is going to happen in the future? Those are the topic which we want to discuss in this contribution.