Programmable Voice Recognition and Response- Is this possible?

[MetalHed187]

Hello,
I am interested in finding a program that would recognize my voice and respond to it. For example. I could record a question like, "How are you?" and when i speak it, the program would respond with whatever phrase I programmed.

I think I would need some sort of tree with the ability to program a line of reactions. There could be a base pool of responses to each question which would be set to random. Each one of these could have their own pools of related responses according to what was randomly selected.

Example:

"Computer, how are you doing today?" (these below would be randomly selected)

-fine thanks
-"why do you feel good?"
-just recieved a memory upgrade
-I blah blah blah
-feeling sick. might have a virus.
-****ty. I feel like draggin' ass today.

(Each one of these responses would have a pool of similar ones and so forth, the depth would go as far as I could program it) Sounds cool.

Any suggestions?

I would just like to be able to speak to my computer and have it respond with whatever phrases I could program into it.

[PrntRhd]

HAL
"Good Morning, Dave"

[Ajmukon]

Programs do exist that can convert text to speech.

But a program that talks and responds to talks...
http://web.mit.edu/giving/spectrum/winter05/computer_talk.html

[Paul Komski]

There is a lot of software around that uses this technology. There may even be voice recognition native to WinXP's accessibility as well as third party stuff such as ZebSpeech (http://www.tucows.com/preview/361546).

It is no great leap in imagination to program other responses to words than just typing them for you. In fact the telelcom service here responds to voice options but that is realtively easy since it only has a few phrases each time to react to and decipher.

I think the biggest problem is in "training" the software to recognise your voice and to have a really good and well set microphone that doesnt pick up extraneous sounds. It can take a while to setup a "database of sounds" but once your software can correctly hear and detect all or most of your words there are a lot of potential options.

I don't know of any specific programming modules or software or how hard it would be to program from the ground up.

PS
XP apparently needs at least SP1 but Vista seems to have even more potential (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=10791).

[MetalHed187]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for all the helpful comments. I'm going to check into some of these things and will keep posting with progress.

Maybe one day we will be at a point where HAL or something like it will be available on all computers. But in my own opinion, I do not think that true artificial intelligence will ever be possible for us to create.




"The mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle

[Paul Komski]

I do not think that true artificial intelligence will ever be possible for us to create

He He - and I wonder if if true human intelligence (well wisdom really) will ever be possible with homo sapiens. When one looks at the world today one might really wonder if erectus ever really became sapiens. Man seems bent on destruction and is it not amazing the amount of spam to do with another form or erectus - viz Viagra. ;)

Me also wonders if the creators of HAL used it with the insight that it stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer in computers. What a pun that abstraction is!

[Sylvander]

Brilliant Paul! :)

You gave my laughter muscles their first workout of the day. :D

[mjc]

As to what HAL is...

Although it is often conjectured that the name HAL was based on a one letter shift from the name IBM, this has been denied by both Clarke and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick. In 2010: Odyssey Two, Clarke even goes so far as to have a reporter pose the question to Dr. Chandra, who replies, "Utter nonsense! [...] I thought that by now every intelligent person knew that H-A-L is derived from Heuristic ALgorithmic".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000

[TheTree718]

arent they testing such programs like this in japan in the AI fields for there "human like" robots?