Speech to Text With Google Chrome

Imagine being able to speak an email into existence. Now stop imagining. Thanks to Google, you can already experiment with this for yourself. Voice recognition is here, and the day is coming soon where you will be able to use it for all sorts of applications. As technology advances, the way that we interact with our devices is constantly changing. Right now, Google is testing a new feature, Web Speech API, which would allow you to write an email using only your voice. It is currently available on Chrome Beta, if you would like to give it a try.

Speculation is such that it will possibly become available on Chrome for Android or possibly even Chrome for iOS. It may even be available in future versions of Chromebooks. Early testers have called it impressive and accurate. It works very quickly to recognize your voice, allowing you to speak at a fairly natural pace. In order to try it out, or if you want to use it on your own website, you will need to download Chrome Beta. If you are interested in learning more about it, Google created a demo, in order to show how it works.

As a JavaScript API, Web Speech API also allows web developers to use speech recognition on their websites and web applications. As such, this could allow for many other wide ranging opportunities. While voice search has long been supported, new expanded dictation support means that the possibilities are much more extensive. It is expected that in the future, talk apps will be performing all sorts of tasks. On the Google Chrome blog, it is suggested that future voice command applications could even include controlling game characters with only your voice.

While users are only able take email dictation out for a spin today, it is clear that this is only the beginning.

[Image via kaget]