An intelligent automated assistant system engages with the user in an integrated, conversational manner using natural language dialog, and invokes external services when appropriate to obtain information or perform various actions. The system can be implemented using any of a number of different platforms, such as the web, email, smartphone, and the like, or any combination thereof. In one embodiment, the system is based on sets of interrelated domains and tasks, and employs additional functionally powered by external services with which the system can interact.

Intelligent Automated Assistant

A virtual assistant uses context information to supplement natural language or gestural input from a user. Context helps to clarify the user's intent and to reduce the number of candidate interpretations of the user's input, and reduces the need for the user to provide excessive clarification input. Context can include any available information that is usable by the assistant to supplement explicit user input to constrain an information-processing problem and/or to personalize results. Context can be used to constrain solutions during various phases of processing, including, for example, speech recognition, natural language processing, task flow processing, and dialog generation.

Using context information to facilitate processing of commands in a virtual assistant

1. Spoken language input Ronald Cole, Victor Zue, Wayne Ward, Melvyn J. Hunt, Richard M. Stern, Renato De Mori, Fabio Brugnara, Salim Roukos, Sadaoki Furui and Patti Price 2. Written language input Joseph Mariani, Sargur N. Srihari, Rohini K. Srihari, Richard G. Casey, Abdel Belaid, Claudie Faure, Eric Lecolinet, Isabelle Guyo, Colin Warwick and Rejean Plamondon 3. Language analysis and understanding Annie Zaenen, Hans Uszkoreit, Fred Karlsson, Lauri Karttunen, Antonio Sanfilippo, Stephen F. Pulman, Fernando Pereira and Ted Briscoe 4. Language generation Hans Uszkoreit, Eduard Hovy, Gertjan van Noord, Gunter Neumann and John Bateman 5. Spoken output technologies Ronald Cole, Yoshinori Sagisaka, Christophe d'Alessandro, Jean-Sylvain Lienard, Richard Sproat, Kathleen R. McKeown and Johanna D. Moore 6. Discourse and dialogue Hans Uszkoreit, Barbara Grosz, Donia Scott, Hans Kamp, Phil Cohe and Egidio Giachin 7. Document processing Annie Zaenen, Per-Kristian Halvorsen, Donna Harman, Peter Schauble, Alan Smeaton, Paul Jacobs, Karen Sparck Jones, Robert Dale, Richard H. Wojcik and James E. Hoard 8. Multilinguality Annie Zaenen, Martin Kay, Christian Boitet, Christian Fluhr, Alexander Waibel, Yeshwant K. Muthusamy and A. Lawrence Spitz 9. Multimodality Joseph Mariani, James L. Flanagan, Gerard Ligozat, Wolfgang Wahlster, Yacine Bellik, Alan J. Goldschen, Christian Benoit, Dominic W. Massaro and Michael M. Cohen 10. Transmission and storage Victor Zue, Isabel Trancoso, Bishnu S. Atal, Nikil S. Jayant and Dirk Van Compernolle 11. Mathematical methods Ronald Cole, Hans Uszkoreit, Steve Levinson, John Makhoul, Aravind Joshi, Herve Bourlard, Nelson Morgan, Ronald M. Kaplan and John Bridle 12. Language resources Ronald Cole, Antonio Zampolli, Eva Ejerhed, Ken Church, Lori Lamel, Ralph Grishman, Nicoletta Calzolari, Christian Galinski and Gerhard Budin 13. Evaluation Joseph Mariani, Lynette Hirschman, Henry S. Thompson, Beth Sundheim, John Hutchins, Ezra Black, Margaret King, David S. Pallett, Adrian Fourcin, Louis C. W. Pols, Sharon Oviatt, Herman J. M. Steeneken and Junichi Kanai Glossary Citation index Index.

Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology

A speech recognition system receives and analyzes speech input from a user in order to recognize and accept a response from the user. Under certain conditions, information about the response expected from the user may be available. In these situations, the available information about the expected response is used to modify the behavior of the speech recognition system by taking this information into account. The modified behavior of the speech recognition system comprises adjusting the rejection threshold when speech input matches the predetermined expected response.

Method and system for considering information about an expected response when performing speech recognition

A method and apparatus that dynamically adjust operational parameters of a text-to-speech engine in a speech-based system are disclosed. A voice engine or other application of a device provides a mechanism to alter the adjustable operational parameters of the text-to-speech engine. In response to one or more environmental conditions, the adjustable operational parameters of the text-to-speech engine are modified to increase the intelligibility of synthesized speech.

Systems and methods for dynamically improving user intelligibility of synthesized speech in a work environment

Although commercial dictation products are beginning to emerge for English, the existence of a convenient keyboard has prevented pervasive use of dictation. On the other hand, for non alphabetic languages like Chinese, there is no convenient input method. Therefore, dictation may already be a more appealing input method, for Chinese. In this paper, we demonstrate that our sub-syllable HMM recognizer and tone classifier are able to yield state-of-the-art Mandarin Chinese syllable and tone recognition performance (95.7% for syllables and 98.9% for tones). By combining the HMM syllable recognizer and tone classifier, the tonal syllable result (94%) appears adequate for a syllable base dictation machine. Finally, to alleviate the homophone problem of syllable dictation, we developed a high-performance 5,000-word recognition system with 93% accuracy for the correct answer and 99% accuracy for the top 3 candidates. >

Towards large vocabulary Mandarin Chinese speech recognition

A method for reducing recognition errors in a speech recognition system that has a user interface, which instructs the user to invoke a new word acquisition module upon a predetermined condition, and that improves the recognition accuracy for poorly recognized words. The user interface of the present invention suggests to a user which unrecognized words may be new words that should be added to the recognition program lexicon. The user interface advises the user to enter words into a new word lexicon that fails to present themselves in an alternative word list for two consecutive tries. A method to improve the recognition accuracy for poorly recognized words via language model adaptation is also provided by the present invention. The present invention increases the unigram probability of an unrecognized word in proportion to the score difference between the unrecognized word and the top one word to guarantee recognition of the same word in a subsequent try. In the event that the score of unrecognized word is unknown (i.e., not in the alternative word list), the present invention increases the unigram probability of the unrecognized word in proportion to the difference between the top one word score and the smallest score in the alternative list.

Method and apparatus for automatically invoking a new word module for unrecognized user input

A method of constructing a language model for a phrase-based search in a speech recognition system and an apparatus for constructing and/or searching through the language model. The method includes the step of separating a plurality of phrases into a plurality of words in a prefix word, body word, and suffix word structure. Each of the phrases has a body word and optionally a prefix word and a suffix word. The words are grouped into a plurality of prefix word classes, a plurality of body word classes, and a plurality of suffix word classes in accordance with a set of predetermined linguistic rules. Each of the respective prefix, body, and suffix word classes includes a number of prefix words of same category, a number of body words of same category, and a number of suffix words of same category, respectively. The prefix, body, and suffix word classes are then interconnected together according to the predetermined linguistic rules. A method of organizing a phrase search based on the above-described prefix/body/suffix language model is also described. The words in each of the prefix, body, and suffix classes are organized into a lexical tree structure. A phrase start lexical tree structure is then created for the words of all the prefix classes and the body classes having a word which can start one of the plurality of phrases while still maintaining connections of these prefix and body classes within the language model.

Search engine for phrase recognition based on prefix/body/suffix architecture

A pattern recognition system which continuously adapts reference patterns to more effectively recognize input data from a given source The input data is converted to a set or series of observed vectors and is compared to a set of Markov Models The closest matching Model is determined and is recognized as being the input data Reference vectors which are associated with the selected Model are compared to the observed vectors and updated ('adapted') to better represent or match the observed vectors This updating method retains the value of these observed vectors in a set of accumulation vectors in order to base future adaptations on a broader data set When updating, the system also may factor in the values corresponding to neighboring reference vectors that are acoustically similar if the data set from the single reference vector is insufficient for an accurate calculation Every reference vector is updated after every input; thus, reference vectors neighboring an updated reference vector may also be updated The updated reference vectors are then stored by the computer system for use in recognizing subsequent inputs

Continuous reference adaptation in a pattern recognition system

A speech recognition system for Mandarin Chinese comprises a pre-processor (32), HMM storage (34), speech identifier (36), and speech determinator (38). The speech identifier includes pseudo initials for representing glottal stops that precede syllables of lone finals. The HMM storage stores context dependent models of the initials, finals, and pseudo initials that make the syllables of Mandarin Chinese speech. The models may be dependent on associated initials or finals and on the tone of the syllable. The speech determinator joins the initials and finals and pseudo initials and finals according to the syllables of the speech identifier. The speech determinator then compares input signals of syllables to the joined models to determine the phonetic structure of the syllable and the tone of the syllable. The system also includes a smoother (42) for smoothing models to make recognitions more robust. The smoother comprises an LDM generator (46) and a detailed model modifier (48). The LDM generator generates less detailed models from the detailed models, and the detailed model modifier smoothes the models with the less detailed models. A method for recognizing Mandarin Chinese speech includes the steps of arranging context dependent, sub-syllable models; comparing an input signal to the arranged models; and selecting the arrangement of models that best matches the input signal to recognize the phonetic structure and tone of the input signal.

Hsiao-Wuen Hon

Papers

Towards large vocabulary Mandarin Chinese speech recognition

Method and apparatus for automatically invoking a new word module for unrecognized user input

Search engine for phrase recognition based on prefix/body/suffix architecture

Continuous reference adaptation in a pattern recognition system

System amd method for generating and using context dependent sub-syllable models to recognize a tonal language