Smart Speakers won't recognise certain voices?

Electronics & Technology
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If you own a Smart Speaker and it won’t recognise your voice or the voice of another intended user, please let us know. We have a test underway, and are looking at doing an extended test of voice recognition.

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From my experience with GPS voice recognition - accent setting are important! My Garmin cannot understand me very well when set to Australian English but has about 95% accuracy when set to American. Argh!

Multi-accented households must have fits with the problem.

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I have always wondered the same thing. I even have trouble with some broad accents from time to time (Welsh, Scottish etc) and wondered how devices cope with not only different emphasis in words or accents…

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Perhaps you would have more luck with West Country (Pirate).

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O for heavens sake what would anyone want with an inanimate object to talk to…unless you were very very lonely or were in some way disadvantaged and tied to a wheelchair. My advice is to get a dog if you want someone to talk to. The reason why so many people are somewhat overweight may well be because of all these gadgets like garage door openers, television remotes and Amazon Echo and Alexa that are being passed off to the unsuspecting consumer. Get that stuff out of the house and start walking around.

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I am incredibly impressed with how well Siri understands me (most of the time). Please note that this is only ever in the car, when I am asking for directions (via Apple CarPlay), with few distracting sounds.
Voice recognition is an absolute minefield, especially allowing for regional accents. Although the technology has come a long way in a fairly short time (compare with Dragon Naturally Speaking about 20 years ago) it still has a long way to go, because not everyone speaks RP English!
In any case, I simply CANNOT see the point of buying a smart speaker (of any brand) in the foreseeable future. Classic example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avp9aUkM5g0

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We have 1 Google home and 2 Google Home Minis. Have so much had any trouble with them not recognising our voices, but sometimes in the device not understanding the wording of something we’ve asked. There have been times when we have asked the same thing more than once and get the reply back, “sorry, I don’t know how to help you,” but will often get a result by rephrasing the question.

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