Cited by 15Speech Recognition and SynthesisSpeech and dialogue systemsSpeech and Audio Processing

A Comprehensive Evaluation of Incremental Speech Recognition and Diarization for Conversational AI

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Addlesee, Angus, Yu, Yanchao, Eshghi, Arash·2020·Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics

Abstract

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems are increasingly powerful and more accurate, but also more numerous with several options existing currently as a service (e.g.Google, IBM, and Microsoft).Currently the most stringent standards for such systems are set within the context of their use in, and for, Conversational AI technology.These systems are expected to operate incrementally in real-time, be responsive, stable, and robust to the pervasive yet peculiar characteristics of conversational speech such as disfluencies and overlaps.In this paper we evaluate the most popular of such systems with metrics and experiments designed with these standards in mind.We also evaluate the speaker diarization (SD) capabilities of the same systems which will be particularly important for dialogue systems designed to handle multi-party interaction.We found that Microsoft has the leading incremental ASR system which preserves disfluent materials and IBM has the leading incremental SD system in addition to the ASR that is most robust to speech overlaps.Google strikes a balance between the two but none of these systems are yet suitable to reliably handle natural spontaneous conversations in real-time.

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Authors
Addlesee, A., Yu, Y., & Eshghi, A.
Affiliations
Heriot-Watt University (GB)
Venue
Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Published
2020
Pages
3492-3503
ISSN
1525-2477 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3115628053
Cited by
15
References
5
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 3
FWCI
0.86
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • International Conference on Computational Linguistics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Edinburgh Napier Research Repository (Edinburgh Napier University) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Speech Recognition and Synthesis
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Speech and dialogue systems
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Signal Processing › Speech and Audio Processing
Keywords
speaker diarization, conversational AI, real-time speech recognition, IBM, Google

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