Why are Siri's speech-recognition algorithms so weird?

Post date: 2020-01-24 08:21:59
Views: 149
When I talk to Siri on my iPhone, her responses often make me wonder what the hell she is thinking. She comes up with some really weird interpretations of what I say. I'm not so much interested in fixing the problem (although that would certainly be nice) as I am in figuring out the reasons behind the idiosyncratic behavior.

I've had my iPhone for about two years, and I've noticed a distinct degradation in the quality of Siri's speech recognition. I prefer to speak my text messages, rather than type them in. (Incidentally, I'm a native speaker of American English, and I don't think I have any speech impediments). Here are some examples of what Siri has been doing:

For a period of a few weeks (or maybe longer), Siri would interpret normal, English words as if they were in a foreign language -- possibly German. I never bothered to do any Google searches on them, but I'd guess that the words were the names of towns or areas in Germany. The problem resolved itself.

I recently spoke a text message that said, "Pick up some ginger ale". The result was, "Pick up some ginger Al". Given that Apple's algorithms are supposed to pick the most-likely interpretation of ambiguous speech, I find this result to be especially surprising. Surely "ginger ale" is a much more common phrase than "ginger Al"?

Today, Siri spelled the name "Michelle" in two different ways within the same text: "She's going to find out from Michelle if Michele can make it tomorrow".

Siri has recently started changing past participles into present-tense verbs, with the word "it" following them: e.g., "I walk it home last night", instead of "I walked home last night".

Also lately, the word "message" has been coming out as "iMessage".

Siri sometimes types out a whole text correctly, only to automatically back-space over it, start it from scratch, and then interpret it incorrectly.

Anybody know why this might be happening?
Number of Comments
Please click Here to read the full story.
 
Other Top and Latest Questions:
Printer best for photographs?
Seattle-area Radon mitigation recommendations?
Resident Alien: Avian Flu
Movie: Knox Goes Away
(Non-Messy) Recipes with Fish
Delicious in Dungeon: Stewed Cabbage/Orcs
Hazbin Hotel: Hello Rosie
FEUD: Hats, Gloves and Effete Homosexuals
Bakers of Askme!
Safest ticket marketplace in the UK?