Why does voice to text still suck?

[Tig Bitties]

I have the Pixel 4 XL, and before that the 3 XL, 2 XL... and have the voice typing set to faster offline mode.

Anyways, I text a lot using voice to text, I press the microphone on the keyboard and speak to it to write my texts and send. And man so any times it gets words wrong often. I would say its like 70% accurate at best. It's only 95% accurate if I put the phone right up to my mouth, and speak slow, and loud and clear. But when I have the phone a couple feet away from me, and speak in my normal voice, and regular speech speed, it seems to get so many things wrong.

Do iPhone's do it better than Android? Or is this just a general thing with the tech just not being perfected yet?

 

[AustinIllini]

Unless you're a white American male, iOS sucks at this, too.

"In" getting confused with "and" is infuriating. it's not so much in voice to text, but I clearly didn't mean to tell Siri to "turn on the light and the living room".

 

[ackmondual]

I have the Pixel 4 XL, and before that the 3 XL, 2 XL... and have the voice typing set to faster offline mode.

Anyways, I text a lot using voice to text, I press the microphone on the keyboard and speak to it to write my texts and send. And man so any times it gets words wrong often. I would say its like 70% accurate at best. It's only 95% accurate if I put the phone right up to my mouth, and speak slow, and loud and clear. But when I have the phone a couple feet away from me, and speak in my normal voice, and regular speech speed, it seems to get so many things wrong.

Do iPhone's do it better than Android? Or is this just a general thing with the tech just not being perfected yet?

I've seen some iPhone users use voice-to-text just fine, but I have family, and a friend I hang out with has been constantly cursing out his iPhone for messing up many dictations (however, that friend isn't willing to jump to Android)

Unless you're a white American male, iOS sucks at this, too.

"In" getting confused with "and" is infuriating. it's not so much in voice to text, but I clearly didn't mean to tell Siri to "turn on the light and the living room".

Make sure you check out the options for accents. One Australian guy had much better experience switching from American English to Australian.

 

[tbayrgs]

I have the Pixel 4 XL, and before that the 3 XL, 2 XL... and have the voice typing set to faster offline mode.

Anyways, I text a lot using voice to text, I press the microphone on the keyboard and speak to it to write my texts and send. And man so any times it gets words wrong often. I would say its like 70% accurate at best. It's only 95% accurate if I put the phone right up to my mouth, and speak slow, and loud and clear. But when I have the phone a couple feet away from me, and speak in my normal voice, and regular speech speed, it seems to get so many things wrong.

Do iPhone's do it better than Android? Or is this just a general thing with the tech just not being perfected yet?

Yeah, I haven't had stellar voice to text experiences on any of my device, Apple or Google or otherwise. It's decent but I generally find myself having to manual correct by typing or redoing it entirely far too often.

I'm sure I'm just imagining it but the device that seems most reliable in this regard, for me, has been my Apple Watch. And good thing too, considering it's the primary method of text entry. Again, not amazing but seems a bit better than my iPhone.

 

[mi7chy]

If it works better by bringing it closer then it's more likely the mic array and inability to filter out background noise. Wonder if there's a study out there that compares voice to text accuracy at varying distances with and without background noise.