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

An audio signal is coded by converting the audio signal into a signal in a frequency domain and effecting a bit allocation on the converted audio signal. A masking threshold level for reducing aurally recognized noise due to a masking effect is determined using a signal spectral distribution in a present frame and a signal spectral distribution in a past frame. If the difference between the determined masking threshold level and a masking threshold level in the past frame is equal to or greater than a predetermined level, then a level limited to the difference corresponding to the predetermined level is regarded as a masking threshold level in the present frame.

Method of processing audio signal

PURPOSE: To provide a clear reproducing voice with high clearness by sup- pressing stuffed noise feeling at the time of reproducing a voice with a low pitch. CONSTITUTION: A high band formant emphasis process emphasizing peaks and troughs of a frequency spectrum envelope on the high band side is performed as a first emphasis process of a step S1. The process so as to deepen the troughs of the frequency spectrum envelope is performed over the whole band, particularly for the lower band side to intermediate band side as a second emphasis process of a next step S2. The process so as to emphasize a peak value of a formant of a voiced sound (V) in the rise part of a sound signal is performed as a third emphasis process of the next step S3. A high band emphasis process so as to unconditionally emphasize the high band side spectrum envelope is performed as a fourth emphasis process of the next step S4. COPYRIGHT: (C)1995,JPO

Method for processing voice signal

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To efficiently quantize phase information of an input signal in the sine wave composition and encoding. SOLUTION: A phase detection part 12 finds the phase of the input signal based upon the voice signal from an input teminal 11 and a scalar quantizer 13 performs scalar quantization. According to the LPC coefficient from a terminal 17, a weight calculation part 18 calculates the spectrum amplitude weight of each harmonic and a bit allocation calculation part 19 calculates optimum quantization allocation bits of respective harmonics by using the weight (k) and sends them to the scalar quantizer 13. The momentary phase information of the input voice signal or its short-period predictive residue signal can be quantized with efficiency. Consequently, the momentary phase information is quantized and transmitted in speech encoding using sine wave composition and encoding for the input voice signal or its short-period predictive residue signal, so that the waveform reproducibility of a source waveform can be actualized at the time of decoding.

Device and method for phase quantization

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To speed up processing and to lighten a hardware load by decreasing the arithmetic quantity of calculation of weight at the time of auditory weighted vector quantization. SOLUTION: An LPC inverse filter 111 finds the LPC(linear predictive encoding) residue of an input speech signal and a vector quantization part 116 performs auditory weighted vector quantization for parameters obtained through the sine wave analytic encoding of a sine wave analytic encoding part 114. At the time of this auditory weighted vector quantization, parameters based upon the impulse response of a weight transfer function are calculated according to the result of orthogonal transformation.

Method and device for encoding speech and method and device for encoding audible signal

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To correctly evaluate the amplitudes of the harmonics of the voice spectrum which exists at the position, that is deviated for the amount of an integer multiple of a basic wave, and to obtain the reproduced output having high clarity by providing the process in which a pitch search and the amplitude evaluation of the harmonics are simultaneously conducted. SOLUTION: A sine wave analysis coding section 114, which is a kind of a harmonics coding circuit, analyzes the output from an LPC inverse filter 111 by a harmonic coding method. In other words, pitches are detected, the amplitudes of harmonics are computed, voiced sound (V)/unvoiced sound(UV) are discriminated and the envelope of harmonics, which are changed by pitches, or the number of amplitudes are dimensionally converted and made as constant numbers. In an open loop pitch search section 141, the LPC residue of the input signals are taken and a relatively rough pitch search is conducted by an open loop. Then, the extracted rough pitch is transmitted to a high precision pitch search 146 and a high precision pitch search is conducted by a closed loop. COPYRIGHT: (C)1998,JPO

Masayuki Nishiguchi

Papers

Method of processing audio signal

Method for processing voice signal

Device and method for phase quantization

Method and device for encoding speech and method and device for encoding audible signal

Voice analysis method and method and device for voice coding