Voice recognition software humor

I regularly use Dragon Systems NaturallySpeaking voice recognition transcription software. In fact, most of these blog posts are dictated, rather than typed. I'm much better at editing and proofing than typing. My typing mistakes are legend amongst my staff. But my mistakes are nowhere as entertaining as when NaturallySpeaking makes a mistake. Hilarious! I collect them in a file just for the humor they can bring as relief to a dreary day. Bust a gut stuff, really.

This morning, it created these whoppers . . .

• René Magritte became renamed a Greek
  (must be Nick Magritte, I'm guessing)
• Picasso became pee at costco
  (been there, done that)
• Hieronymus Bosch became hero on a moist boss
  (How do you spell eeeew?)
• Bruegel became broil grill
  (If you are familiar with his paintings, this is really much funnier)

I was doing an introduction to the new LensWork Folio by Dominic Rouse we are preparing. I had used this introduction in the audio interview in LensWork Extended #69, so I had Dragon simply translate the MP3 audio file — hence no punctuation. (When I dictate specifically for transcription and include the punctuation in my dictation, it gets transcribed correctly almost every time.)

Here is the relevant punctuation-free portion as it came out of the transcription process . . .
 

Dominik grouse would be the first to admit that his use of the camera and the darkroom are unusual photography as a wide and varied community of folks is a very big tent indeed his corner of photography has few fellow travelers contemporarily Jerry yule's mind comes to mind but why [should be when] I think of his work I think more of the painters broil grill hero on a moist boss and renamed a Greek Riles does not photograph the world he makes photographs of his mind looking at his images is a profoundly different experience than looking at say at Ansel Adams photograph with Adams one prepares for his photographs by reading John Muir with routes one prepares by reading Lewis Carroll or even Freud his images are challenging because the questions he asks in his images are challenging in themselves in my interview with him he quotes pee at costo who said that computers are useless because they only give you answers Rosses photographs pose far more questions than they answer and I suspect that is precisely his intention

I also suspect that Dominic Rouse will appreciate that I've corrected "Dominik grouse." I am still debating about Jerry yule's mind. I kinda like it.

Of 189 words in this passage, 10 are incorrectly transcribed — a 5.3% error factor. I could testify truthfully in any court of law that this is about 10 times more accurate than my manual typing skills.

What is really impressive is that if you don't count proper names, the transcription is 99.44% accurate. Amazing. If you take the time to train it to know the proper names you use regularly, it will get them correct, too. Note Ansel Adams, John Muir, Lewis Carroll, and Freud were all transcribed correctly.

A useful piece of software I highly recommend for any of you who do a lot of writing and struggle to be accurate typists — like me. And besides, you can't find humor like this just anywhere!

I once recommended this software to Bill Jay. He bought it but didn't take the time to train it to recognize his British accent. Not long after this, I read this in an introduction to one of his books —

I wrote (spoke) a note into my computer: "I would like to produce a collection of articles called Something Photographic," a seemingly bland phrase but nevertheless one which sounds rather jaunty. Of course, the computer typed: "I would like to produce a collection of articles called son in the blood of the cat…" I looked at that sentence and said to myself: Yes, I would! So here it is.

And that is the title of his book.

Comments

[Douglas R Winn]

I miss Bill Jay!