Speech technology is a type of computing technology that enables an electronic device to recognize, analyze and understand spoken word or audio. This is typically done by inputting digital sound signals and matching its pattern against a library of stored patterns. Speech technology relies on the concepts of signal processing and machine learning. Signal processing is used to extract relevant information from speech, such as speaker characteristics, background noise and frequency. Machine learning is then applied to these listening devices to recognize and analyze the speech signals to perform the desired output, such as returning an automatic response. Since speech is a primary form of communication, the growth of speech technology is an important step towards harnessing unstructured voice data. Subfields of speech technology include: speech recognition speech verification real-time speech to text conversion interactive voice response (IVR) speech synthesis speech analytics Speech technology is often spoken interchangeably with voice technology, but they serve different functions. Speech technology focuses on what is said, while voice technology zeroes in on who said it.
