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Nuance, the company that brought you Siri, has been busy working on their voice recognition technology. You might think that they rested on their laurels after Siri became the virtual assistant for the iPhone 4S, but you would be mistaken. Earlier this week, Nuance announced its latest development, Nina, voice recognition technology with enhanced and powerful capabilities.
Siri brought voice search, reminders and communication abilities to the iPhone 4S, but we consumers quickly got spoiled and soon were clamoring for even more tech. Well, even if you haven’t been clamoring, Nuance is going to give you more. Nina is technology that is designed to help you manage your travel, banking and investment activities.
Like Siri, Nina is a virtual assistant and uses Natural Language Understanding so you can talk to Nina in conversational language without having to remember specific commands.
But Nina gains skills that Siri doesn’t (yet) have. Nina offers not just voice recognition but voice identification. Nina will be able to identify who you are by the sound of your voice, eliminating the need to enter passwords.
With Nina you will be able to use your voice to pay bills, transfer funds, make airline and hotel reservations and trade investments. Nina is designed to be used with both Android and iPhone.
Here’s a video demonstrating Nina in action:
(Is it just me or is anyone else seeing irony in using voice identification as a password when Nina’s voice sounds identical to Siri’s voice?)
Nina is technology designed for companies to incorporate into their own apps. Major travel, insurance, financial and banking institutions are the target market. USAA, the financial services firm available to US military service members, veterans, and their families, has signed on to incorporate Nina into its mobile app, anticipated to be launched early next year.
You can learn more about Nina at the Nuance website.
Are you excited about the expansion of voice recognition and identification technology? Have you been eagerly anticipating the next generation of Siri? Would you be interested in using apps that have Nina’s capabilities? Do you think voice identification provides better security than passwords? Please share your thoughts with us in the Comments section below!
I think this technology is interesting, but will be better when a lot of the technology is integrated together. it seems to be moving in that direction. Eventually, the technology and human advancement will be more important than making money. Then I think phones will be portals to supercomputers and tablet computer and televisions will be the display units and our stereo systems will be integrated for audio. I think even our cars will be integrated into the system. I can’t wait to be able to tell the lawnmower to mow my lawn! 🙂
Hi Mike, You don’t have to wait for your robot lawn mower: http://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Robotics-RL850-RoboMower-Automatic/dp/B0001ZI54M
Technology has always been exciting to me but the pace at which advancements are developing is amazing. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings! :-bd
Where will Nina work? Will it work on my Kindle Fire, because this is one thing I definitely miss on my Amazon tablet. Since it has no microphone, hopefully Amazon will create a work around for this – we want voice recognition and we want it now. Lol. But I do also want it on my PC for blogging. Yes!!!!!
But am worried about all this talk about using it for banking purposes and what not. What a heck of a way to invite security issues and hackers. No thanks.
I’ll stick to voicing my weather and sport reports. Just.
Hi Missy, Great question! I don’t know if the next version of the Kindle Fire will have a microphone, but that would be great if it did!
Nina will be incorporated into different company’s apps so, for example, if the USAA app is available for the (new) Kindle Fire, then Nina would presumably be available for you there.
I agree with you, trusting voice recognition for financial services sounds very scary. But I’m thinking that personal checks, credit cards and cash machines probably seemed scary at first too. I just know that I wouldn’t want to be the first to try out Nina with my own bank accounts. I won’t be an early adopter on that one!
Hi Carolyn
I love Siri on my iPhone 4S so Nina sounds just fine to me.
Siri does have some issues with voice recognition for me though so I would be a bit wary of using Nina for financial transactions if the same were the case for voice identification.
Parental controls would definitely be switched on if Apple decide to push Siri out the way and bring in Nina!
Really interesting stuff. Thank you for sharing Carolyn.
Tim
Hi Tim, I’m a fan of Siri too and I look forward to the advancements in the technology. Integrating Siri technology into apps is a welcome extension but I am a bit hesitant to trust Nina with my financial transactions.
As far as parental controls are concerned, I’m thinking voice identification would take care of that, though lots of people who call on the phone mistake my oldest daughter’s voice for mine. Would Nina be smart enough to tell the difference? That would be a good test!
Hi, I´m a newbie but would like to comment and say that I don’t think voice identification will give more security, Ok, I admit I´ve been using passwords all my life but I wonder if background noise will affect the voice method in anyway, and what is you have a sore throat and can’t speak normally.
Hi Lenin, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, I have wondered the same thing. As I wrote this article, I had a sore throat and a bad cold. I wondered if Nina would be able to identify me from my voice.
I know that Siri struggles when there is a lot of background noise so I imagine Nina would too. But I am fairly certain that there you will have the ability to type the information in addition to speaking it.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!
I have just tested Siri a few times, mostly because I don’t speak English that often and I don’t understand what I should use Siri for. I have thought about using it for reminders, taking notes and sending SMS, but I don’t understand how 🙂
Nina looks awesome, but I’m a bit old school when it comes to this 🙂
Hi Jens, I find Siri incredibly useful to make and change calendar entries. I’m not very good at typing on my iPhone virtual keyboard so it’s much faster for me to just tell Siri what to do.
My husband just got his first iPhone and loves to use Siri for searching. He talks to her all the time, but he has only had a few weeks to try it out.
Do you find that Siri has a difficult time understanding you? Is your Norwegian accent a challenge for Siri? I wonder if Siri will be available in Norwegian. You may enjoy this article about Siri’s Norwegian roots: http://www.cultofmac.com/129150/this-norwegian-man-made-millions-selling-siri-to-steve-jobs/
Wow. I had no idea that a fellow Norwegian was behind Siri 🙂
I actually don’t know how to use Siri, that’s my problem. I need to read more about it, that’s all.
Hi Jens, Yes, Siri is pretty intuitive, but it does help to read about it to discover its features. I hope you enjoy it when you learn more!
Wow Carolyn. You are the best!!!
Thank you so much for the gift. I can’t express how happy I am right now.
Thank you! 😀
You’re very welcome. Congratulations on getting your first Kindle book published!
Interesting!
Only one question: What if someone could mimic your voice (It isn’t impossible, right?).
I like the concept and the idea itself, also excited that they are making it available for android (but, will Google allow it?). I guess, Google will, since Nina isn’t directly available to the customer (Is it? Or is it just for the major corporations?).
The only thing that worries me in general is the bad effects of smartphones (Especially with all the research going on about how radiation can affect our body, we need to be cautious, right?).
By the way, Carolyn, yesterday I learned of an dictation app – http://ctrlq.org/dictation/ – which we can add to our site, in search and in commenting box (interesting concept and I tested it, works great).
Hi Jeevan, great point! We would want to be sure that the technology was fool-proof before we trust it with our finances.
Google isn’t restrictive about Android apps the way Apple is with iOS apps, so I don’t foresee a problem with Nina-enabled apps coming to Android devices.
Thanks for sharing the information about the dictation site. I will definitely check that out!
Hmmm, for me the jury is still out if I would think voice recognition would be more secure. I suppose it would be pretty safe….
I would be interested in using apps with that technology however. I mean, after all, I’m all in, right?
Hi Bill, Yes, you are quite the tech guru now! Do you use Siri much on your iPhone? My husband got an iPhone a few weeks ago and he now talks to Siri constantly.
I wouldn’t be the first to trust Nina with my financial information, but if it works well, it may just be more secure than using passwords. Time will tell!
Ha haa … as one commenter said here, don’t trust Nina with money 🙂
I like the humanization of the machines… Whether its a good thing or a bad, discussion for another day! 20yrs later, a mom maybe instructing her phone,
‘Sina (for no better name, Siri+Nina), can you ask Alex (the robot) to watch my baby. Will be back in an hour from the mall. And yeah, tell him, he’ll get a star on his iRewardChart’!
🙂
Hi iRewardChart, Great idea to expand the use of your app to include robots! I’m wondering what would be a good incentive for them? More memory? Faster processor? Human domination? 😉
Love the name Sina!
Wow, that seems to be a powerful alternative to Siri. I’m yet to try out this application, but will now surely give it a shot. Let me see what can it do for me, well Nina – how are you ? That’s going to my first question :P.
Hi Prly, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, that’s a good first question for Nina. I imagine when Nina is launched there will be a lot of funny questions asked of her. 🙂
Wowww. This is incredible. It sounds like a sci-fi movie. If Nina can deliver those capabilities implied in video, it will be the next big thing.
Hi Frank, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, this new technology is very exciting, and I hope it is very successful. I hope that it is very accurate though, because there potential for disaster when dealing with finances and travel!
Now that’ something i call technology. 🙂 Voice identification is the better technique to secure our online accounts.Technology has always presented new inventions for the better.And Nina’s voice identification has made things easy but more secure now.
What say Carolyn…?
Hi Aditya, I hope that Nina does make identification more secure. After the hacking of Mat Honan’s account a few weeks ago, password protection seems to be too vulnerable to hacking to make it totally secure. If voice identification could be perfected, that may be the security answer we are looking for!
Wow, Nina sounds really awesome. I am actually using a Windows phone now so, I wonder if Nuance is ever going to bring Nina to the Microsoft platform.
Being a Window Phone 7 developer I was thinking in the similar lines too. The virtual ladies are summoned to serve for the leading mobile OSes (Glad its on Android too) but what about the new kid on the block? Window Phone 7 is sure having its limitations but it could make it big in the mobile space. I hope there was voice based augmented reality to the MS mobile OS too.. Awaiting Carolyn’s reply!
Hi Lakshmi, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I agree, it would be great to get Nuance technology on Windows phones. Windows Phone 8 is due to be launched later this year and after Microsoft releases its software development kit for that operating system, perhaps Nuance will make its technology available on Windows phones. I’m a big fan of Windows phones so the more apps that are available on that platform, the better for everyone! :-bd
Hi Jasmine, I agree, I hope Nuance brings this technology to the Windows Phone platform. As Windows Phone 8 becomes more closely integrated with Windows 8 for computers, Nuance may be able to integrate Siri/Nina with a desktop app! I look forward to seeing both what Microsoft and Nuance have in store for us! 🙂
I don’t yet use Siri, so I’m probably not ready for Nina. But I love the fact that the technology is evolving and being further perfected. By the time I’m ready to jump on board, all of the kinks will be ironed out :-).
Hi Ruth, I’m curious why you don’t use Siri. Is it because you tried it and didn’t like it or haven’t you had a chance to try it yet?
Yes, Siri is not kink-free, so I imagine Nina may not be either when it is launched. But it really needs to be if it is going to work with financial transactions and travel plans. I look forward to seeing what the reaction is to Nina when it launches.