Microsoft’s New Bing Voice Recognition Ad Claims It’s Twice as Fast, But Looks It’s From the 80s

bing voice search devices

bing voice search devicesIf you happen to be using a Windows Phone in the US, you may have noticed that the voice recognition capabilities on your phone have grown a whole lot faster recently. Over the last several weeks, Microsoft has been rolling out a series of updates to improve the speed and accuracy of voice to text and voice search. Now Bing claims it will return results twice as fast as before and increase accuracy by 15%!

The Bing team has been focusing on an advamced approach to speed up voice search and make voice interpretations more accurate. This technology, called Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), is inspired by the way neurons function in the brain. That is, in a way similar to biological systems, DNN technology can help detect voice patterns. By coupling this capability for voice detection with the Microsoft Research Department’s datasets of information extracted from Bing’s massive index, Bing was able to use the DNNs to learn and adapt their voice recognition tool. Bing’s new voice capabilities today function a lot closer to the way humans recognize and interpret speech. With a few other improvements, Bing has cut down their response time to voice inquiries by 50% while reducing the error rate of interpretations by 15%, even in “noisy situations.”

You can check the updates in-action in the video below, which also appears to be simulating some sort of noisy situation – either that or Microsoft’s marketing team dubbed over a bad-quality tape recording from back in the 80s. If the best Microsoft can do for a big announcement like this is two dudes staring at each other in front of camera and film them sweating over elevator music, I’ll have to take Microsoft at their word that Windows Phone is now truly improved. By the time the spokesmen pulled out yellow walkie-talkies in the middle of the video I almost choked thinking the entire thing was a joke and I was involved in some sort of hoax.

Bing Makes Voice Search on Windows Phone More Accurate and Twice As Fast

Yikes! After the Scroogled campaign, are no funds left in Bing’s marketing department? No matter how advanced and competitive Windows phones, tablets, and computers may be no one is jumping to buy them over shinier and friendlier Apple or Android devices – especially not with the low budget weird science, B-movie marketing material that Microsoft dumps onto the internet. Thank you, Microsoft, for this might have been the most laughable modern video announcement I’ve ever seen.

Bing

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

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