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

Media objects are transformed into active, connected objects via identifiers embedded into them or their containers. In the context of a user's playback experience, a decoding process extracts the identifier from a media object and possibly additional context information and forwards it to a server. The server, in turn, maps the identifier to an action, such as returning metadata, re-directing the request to one or more other servers, requesting information from another server to identify the media object, etc. The linking process applies to broadcast objects as well as objects transmitted over networks in streaming and compressed file formats.

Connected audio and other media objects

The various methods and devices described herein relate to devices which, in at least certain embodiments, may include one or more sensors for providing data relating to user activity and at least one processor for causing the device to respond based on the user activity which was determined, at least in part, through the sensors. The response by the device may include a change of state of the device, and the response may be automatically performed after the user activity is determined.

Automated Response to and Sensing of User Activity in Portable Devices

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

A method for detecting against unauthorized transmission of digital works comprises the steps of maintaining a registry of information permitting identification of digital copyrighted works, monitoring a network for transmission of at least one packet-based digital signal, extracting at least one feature from the at least one digital signal, comparing the extracted at least one feature with registry information and applying business rules based on the comparison result.

Copyright detection and protection system and method

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent the occurrence of the adverse effect due to the phase distortion by initializing the phases of harmonics and giving different initial values to odd and even numbered harmonics. SOLUTION: The vector quantized index data of the spectrum envelopes from an input terminal 203 are transmitted to an inverse vector quantization 212 for inverse vector quantization operations and the data become the data for spectrum envelopes and transmitted to a sinusoidal wave synthesizing circuit 215 of a voiced sound synthesizing section 211. The circuit 215 receives the phase initialization value information from a phase initializing circuit 219. The circuit 219 initializes the phases of the harmonics (a fundamental wave and its higher harmonics) used in the circuit 215 during the transition from a voiceless sound (UV) frame to a voiced sound (V) frame and different initialization values are given to the odd and even numbered harmonics.

Voice synthesizing method

There is provided a sound detecting apparatus including: a feature value extracting unit which extracts a feature value per every predetermined time from an input time signal; a feature value maintaining unit which maintains a feature value sequence of a predetermined number of detection target sound items; and a comparison unit which respectively compares a feature value sequence extracted by the feature value extracting unit with a feature value sequence of the maintained predetermined number of detecting target sound items and obtains detection results of the predetermined number of detection target sound items every time the feature value extracting unit newly extracts a feature value, wherein the feature value extracting unit includes a time frequency transform unit and a likelihood distribution detecting unit, smooths the obtained likelihood distribution in frequency and time directions, and extracts a feature value per the predetermined time.

Sound detecting apparatus, sound detecting method, sound feature value detecting apparatus, sound feature value detecting method, sound section detecting apparatus, sound section detecting method, and program

For accurate scene-change detection, the amplitudes of sub-band signals subjected to the spectral decomposition are detected, and the detected amplitudes are smoothed and sampled during smoothing Then, the amount of spectral change is determined based on the smoothed sub-band amplitude and the smoothed sub-band amplitude which is one sampled amplitude before that smoothed sub-band amplitude It is then determined whether or not the determined amount of spectral change is greater than a predetermined threshold, and processing is performed based on the determination result

Signal processing apparatus and method, recording medium, and program

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To identify various kinds of broadcasting programs while exactly and surely sorting contents or categories. SOLUTION: In a short-time signal processing part 3, a medium-time signal processing part 4 and a long-time signal processing part 5, the audio signals or video signals of a broadcasting program are made into frames (short-time frame, medium-time frame and long-time frame) in respectively hierarchically different time zones and the audio signals or video signals in the frames are respectively processed. A stream processing part 6 discriminates the category of the broadcasting program from a program category sorting vector yr and a hierarchy update coefficient ξ obtained from the long-time signal processing part 5 on the final stage.

Device and method for processing signal

A signal decoding method and apparatus in which the speech signal reproducing speed is controlled without changing the phoneme or the pitch, in which the apparatus has a data number convertor for converting the number of orthogonal transform coefficients entering a transmission signal input terminal from N to M, an inverse orthogonal transform unit for inverse orthogonal-transforming the M number of the orthogonal transform coefficients obtained by the data number convertor, and a linear predictive coding synthesis filter for performing predictive synthesis based on the short-term prediction residuals obtained by the inverse orthogonal transform unit. For an input signal, short-term prediction residuals are found and are orthogonally transformed to form the orthogonal transform coefficients at a rate of N coefficients per transform unit. The frequency positions of the N transform coefficients may be rearranged to M values by M/N or by oversampling to change N to M. A portable radio terminal embodying the invention is described.

Masayuki Nishiguchi

Papers

Voice synthesizing method

Sound detecting apparatus, sound detecting method, sound feature value detecting apparatus, sound feature value detecting method, sound section detecting apparatus, sound section detecting method, and program

Signal processing apparatus and method, recording medium, and program

Device and method for processing signal

Speech decoding method and apparatus to control the reproduction speed by changing the number of transform coefficients