Good news for those interested in online media investing! On Monday, Google (NASDAQ:$GOOGL) disclosed numerous updates to its Cloud Speech API, which is a product that was first launched as part of the company’s Cloud Machine Learning platform in 2016.
For those who don’t know, Google’s Cloud Speech API lets third-party developers and companies integrate Google’s speech recognition smarts into their own products. Contact centers, for instance, might wish to use the Cloud Speech API to route calls automatically to specific departments by “listening” to a caller’s commands. In 2016, Twilio (NYSE:$TWLO) tapped the Cloud Speech API for its voice platform, which allowed the company’s own developer customers to transform speech into text within their products.
And today, Google announced three brand new updates to the API. One of the most notable updates is world-level time offsets; otherwise known as timestamps. This is significant as it is useful for longer audio files when the user is required to find a specific word in the audio. To simplify, it allows the audio file to be mapped directly to text, thus allowing anyone – from researchers to reporters – to find exactly where a word or phrase was used. This, for instance, would be helpful in an interview. Additionally, it will allow for text to be displayed in real time as the audio is playing.
“Our number one most requested feature has been providing timestamp information for each word in the transcript,” said Dan Aharon, Google product manager.
In connection, Google has also extended long-form audio support from 80 minutes to 180 minutes. Not only that, it will also support longer files on a case-by-case basis upon request, according to Aharon.
Last but not least, within the Cloud Speech API update news, Google announced today that it has expanded support from the original 89 languages to 30 new tongues, which include Swahili, Amharic, and Bengali.
It’s important to note that the above mentioned language changes will have an impact on Google’s consumer products, including Voice Search smarts and Gboard Android app.
“Our new expanded language support helps Cloud Speech API customers reach more users in more countries for an almost global reach,” said Aharon. “In addition, it enables users in more countries to use speech to access products and services that up until now have never been available to them.”
Featured Image: twitter
