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People drop their regional accents so Siri and Alexa can understand them

Amazon's Echo Dot - voice recognition users with regional accents have struggled to get their home devices to understand them, so they are changing how they speak
Amazon's Echo Dot - voice recognition users with regional accents have struggled to get their home devices to understand them, so they are changing how they speak

Regional accents have been getting tech users in trouble when talking to their voice assistant, forcing them to drop their dialect and talk in 'standard' English.

Tech users have been fuming at the Google Home assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, Alexa and Siri, with the majority finding they have to change how they speak to be understood, a new study has shown.

People surveyed in Newcastle said they were getting fed up having to repeat their simple requests, such as 'Alexa, what's the weather like tomorrow?' only to be told: "I'm sorry, I didn't get that..."

Some 79 per cent of people with a regional accent said they 'regularly' alter their voice to speak in plainer English.

People were also concerned that the use of voice recognition could 'stamp out regional accents'

Siri has also had trouble understanding people, according to a survey taken in Newcastle (Mandy Cheng/AFP/GettyImages)
Siri has also had trouble understanding people, according to a survey taken in Newcastle (Mandy Cheng/AFP/GettyImages)

The Life Science Centre museum in Newcastle upon Tyne, which conducted the survey of survey of 536 visitors, said the research demonstrated people were frustrated with technology that doesn't

Linda Conlon, chief executive of Life, said: “Ask anyone with a regional accent and they’ll tell you the struggles of using automated voice recognition. The same people who decades ago were frustrated as teens trying to get cinema listings from an automated telephone system are now having the same issues with their smartphones or smart speakers – the technology has moved forward, but the inclusivity to cater for regional accents has not.”

Google Home (NDB Photos)
Google Home (NDB Photos)

Ten things you should be getting Alexa to do for you

1. Wake you up: “Alexa, set my alarm for 6.45”

2. Manage your diary: "Alexa, add a meeting to my calendar on Thursday at 4.30"

3. Read you the headlines: "Alexa, what's in the Evening Standard today?"

4. Your shopping: "Alexa, buy more [Amazon item]."

5. Help you with that annoying ear worm: "Alexa, play that song that goes 'Ground control to major tom’."

6. Pump up the bass: "Alexa, increase bass.”

7. Make a decision for you: "Alexa, flip a coin"

8. Lull you to sleep: "Alexa, sing me a song"

9. Read you a bedtime story: “Alexa, play ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

10. Run your smart home: “Alexa, I’m cold (with IFTTT recipe).

Dr Laurence White, Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, said: “If we only ever spoke to our devices and they failed to understand our accent, this might alter our speech in the longer term. Because of the social power of our voice, however, as soon as we talk to familiar people again, we revert to our habitual accent.”

The use of personal digital assistants in the home has increased dramatically in the past couple of years. In the new research by Life Science Centre, 70% of respondents said they own such a device.

Dr White said: “Collecting research data, like this, from Life Science Centre visitors is a great opportunity to reach beyond the usual participant groups. We should always consider, however, how representative any sample is of the population in general; for example, visitors to an exhibition about robots might have stronger views on how tech companies are catering to their needs.”

People have been frustrated with their Amazon Echo when Alexa doesn't understand their regional accent. (PA Archive/PA Images)
People have been frustrated with their Amazon Echo when Alexa doesn't understand their regional accent. (PA Archive/PA Images)

An Amazon spokesman said: “We’ve worked hard to ensure Alexa can understand multiple accents, and Alexa is designed to get smarter every day. As more people speak to Alexa, with various different accents, the more she adapts to speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences.”

A Google spokesman told the Standard in a statement: “We are proud of the fact that Google Home recognises a range of regional accents and is especially good in the UK. Thanks to machine learning voice recognition on the device has hugely improved and will continue to do so over time.”

Sam O’Meara UK Director of Applause, a crowdsourced testing company which is running research into voice recognition, said: "This ‘language barrier’ between voice assistants and users has worrying implications for the future of our relationship with voice technology.

"Technology is there to make our lives easier, not to force us to conform to its limitations. This is already leading to an ‘in-between’ half-robot/half-human language which does not fully cater to the realities of human experience, and which over time could cause disengagement and eventually abandonment as users grow tired of changing how they speak.

"We need to rigorously test this technology in the real-world, with real people, from all sorts of different backgrounds and with different accents and dialects."