Stupid voice recognition systems

[Ediswan]

I juat had a voice recognition system ask for my birthdate, so I gave it, as day,month,61. The response was "Is your birthdate day, month, 2061 ?".

 

[McRhu]

From experience I can vouch for the fact that voice recognition + Scottish accent = disaster. Having but recently driven myself to apoplexy trying to pronounce a car registration number to a voice recognition system I am testament to the 'phone-throttling fury such systems provoke.

(Cue lift skit)...

 

[GusB]

From experience I can vouch for the fact that voice recognition + Scottish accent = disaster. Having but recently driven myself to apoplexy trying to pronounce a car registration number to a voice recognition system I am testament to the 'phone-throttling fury such systems provoke.

(Cue lift skit)...

Eleven!

 

[Bevan Price]

Beware of voice recognition systems at your bank or financial institutions.
BBC Radio 4 (You and Yours) had a feature on that today - and the voice recognition systems could not reliably distinguish between "your" voice and AI cloned versions of "your" voice.-- and sometimes the AI only needed a small amount of your recorded voice, e.g. even from a mobile phone conversation. Another device for fraudsters to access your accounts. .

 

[Harpo]

I don’t use our laptop-VWs voice system but it picks up odd words and randomly bursts into life. It doesn’t seem to have learned my two word version of ‘go away’.

 

[gg1]

Beware of voice recognition systems at your bank or financial institutions.
BBC Radio 4 (You and Yours) had a feature on that today - and the voice recognition systems could not reliably distinguish between "your" voice and AI cloned versions of "your" voice.-- and sometimes the AI only needed a small amount of your recorded voice, e.g. even from a mobile phone conversation. Another device for fraudsters to access your accounts. .

Do any financial institutions (or any other organisation for that matter) actually use voice recognition to verify ID (in the sense of the specific tone of your voice, not your responses to questions)? It's not something I've ever encountered.

 

[Ediswan]

Do any financial institutions (or any other organisation for that matter) actually use voice recognition to verify ID (in the sense of the specific tone of your voice, not your responses to questions)? It's not something I've ever encountered.

Santander did in the radio item noted above. Also another bank, I don't recall which.

 

[philthetube]

I remember a story told on the radio many years ago about a lady asking about a rail journey on national rail enquiries, after the system getting things wrong aany times she shouted down the line, f***off, to which she got the response, sorry there are no direct services to Falkirk.


This was in the days when only details of direct services could be got via the speech recognition service.

 

[bleeder4]

Do any financial institutions (or any other organisation for that matter) actually use voice recognition to verify ID (in the sense of the specific tone of your voice, not your responses to questions)? It's not something I've ever encountered.

HSBC do. When you ring their telephone banking line you first have to identify yourself by entering your telephone banking PIN. But the recorded instructions also say that to avoid having to remember the PIN you could set up voice recognition instead. I would never do it though. As others have said, in an age in which AI can accurately clone our voices from just a few words, relying on voice recognition to access critical systems is really not advisable.

 

[jfollows]

NatWest and others used to make you talk to a stupid machine to "prove" your identity, and when you finally got through to a person they made you do it all again. "But I've just done this" wasn't good enough. More recently, though, they seem to have fixed this, in that I still have to talk to a stupid machine but I no longer seem to need to re-prove who I am to a real person.
Don't get me wrong, the principle is OK, I can live with having to verify who I am when I call them. They used to try and get you to do the same when they called you, but they seem to have realised the stupidity of this now, at last.

And I won’t do voice recognition or “biometrics” with anyone, it’s a flawed concept, someone else could capture and replay any of it and whilst I can change my password I can’t change my fingerprint or my voice when they get hacked, as will inevitably happen.

 

[Statto]

From experience I can vouch for the fact that voice recognition + Scottish accent = disaster. Having but recently driven myself to apoplexy trying to pronounce a car registration number to a voice recognition system I am testament to the 'phone-throttling fury such systems provoke.

(Cue lift skit)...

That reminds me the news segment in one episode of Top Gear were they showed a person with a very heavy Scottish accent trying multiple times to say pair, the system didn't recognise the command because of the heavy accent.

 

[3141]

Santander did in the radio item noted above. Also another bank, I don't recall which.

Yes, I rang Santander last week and I had to say "At Santander my voice is my password" three times before it was satisfied.

 

[JohnMcL7]

From experience I can vouch for the fact that voice recognition + Scottish accent = disaster. Having but recently driven myself to apoplexy trying to pronounce a car registration number to a voice recognition system I am testament to the 'phone-throttling fury such systems provoke.

(Cue lift skit)...

Yes I can definitely vouch for the same...what really bugs me is how these systems constantly promote their voice features as being easier to use 'Try searching using your voice' 'Try Hey Spotify, play my weekly playlist' etc. when the only function these voice search and command systems provide is utter frustration.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

My wife tends to use the voice to text function on WhatsApp rather than type things out.

No prizes for guessing what happens when:

a) We're on a train and the announcements start up while she is in the middle of composing a message.

b) If something happens to distract her when she's composing a message at home and she lets out a naughty word or two...

There was one occasion at home when she asked me what had happened with a message she'd just sent; I took one look and could see it had a headline off the BBC News included in the message...

 

[Buzby]

I have to admit that I remain impressed with Siri, which not only comprehends my (sometimes) malformed questions, but as my ‘smart’ home progresses, the various things I can now do with its help is truly superb and I wouldn’t wish to go back to the ‘old’ days!

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

Reading through this thread, one of the first things which came to mind was of this sketch from Miranda featuring a (realistically frustrating) voice recognition system.

 

[bleeder4]

I have to admit that I remain impressed with Siri, which not only comprehends my (sometimes) malformed questions, but as my ‘smart’ home progresses, the various things I can now do with its help is truly superb and I wouldn’t wish to go back to the ‘old’ days!

At one point the guy in the flat below me had Siri. He had it hooked into his central heating thermostat as I would hear him every now and then saying loudly things like "Siri, set the temperature to 20 degrees". He would often go away for the weekend, so on cold Saturday mornings in Winter, once he had left I would go downstairs to his front door and say very loudly "Siri, set the temperature to 25 degrees". As hot air rises, within an hour or two, I would have a comfortably warm flat without having to use my own heating to do it. He moved out last year though, presumably due to the unexpectedly expensive cost of his heating bills!

 

[185143]

Eleven!

FREEDOM!

 

[Buzby]

though, presumably due to the unexpectedly expensive cost of his heating bills!

If only he had personalised it! My system recognises who’s speaking and you have to be explicitly enabled for it! When trying it out, K thought we’d save a fortune when I set it up so that the heating went off when I left and came on again on my return. I went away for a boys weekend and my wife explained (on the phone) that she was freezing as the CH had failed. Only then did I realise what I’d done, but couldn’t bring myself to admit it to her it was all my fault!

 

[eoff]

NatWest and others used to make you talk to a stupid machine to "prove" your identity, and when you finally got through to a person they made you do it all again. "But I've just done this" wasn't good enough. More recently, though, they seem to have fixed this, in that I still have to talk to a stupid machine but I no longer seem to need to re-prove who I am to a real person.

RBS used to have a telephone system that was OK, now I think it is the NatWest system and in all incantations has been a disaster. It is never consistent and I have still not worked out how to do some functions reliably without it passing me to a real agent.