International Business Machines Corporation

Nuance Communications, Inc.

George Murdoch Clelland

John Brian Pickering

Gary James Calder

Robert James Mann

Anthony Timothy Farrell

Paul Reilly

A method and apparatus for generating appropriate confirmatory prompts in a speech-enabled, interactive computer system. The method can be incorporated in an interactive voice response system that includes receiving an input audio stream over a voice channel from a users, performing keyword recognition on received input audio as subsequent input audio is being received, and prompting the user with an acknowledgement of the keyword or keywords as subsequent input audio is being received. In another aspect of the method, the volume of the speech input can be continuously monitored. In a further aspect of the method, recognition results and associated confidence values can be combined to select different confirmatory prompts, and the volume is tailored to be the same as, louder than or quieter than the volume of the speech input, so that different types of confirmation can be automatically generated to produce a natural speech-enabled interface.

Computer generated prompting

Speech encoding in a client server system such as a laptop, personal data assistant or mobile phone communicating with an interactive voice response telephony application. A method of communication with a speech enabled remote telephony device such as a mobile phone is described comprising the following steps. Receiving user speech input into the mobile phone as part of a dialogue with an interactive voice response telephony application. Performing speech recognition to convert the speech into text and converting the text into tones such as DTMF tones. Transmitting the DTMF tones over the voice channel to an interactive voice response (IVR) telephony application an allowed response feature converts the users response to a known valid response of the IVR application. A language conversion feature allows a person in one language to speak in that language to an IVR application operating in a different language.

Speech encoding in a client server system

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Alresford, United Kingdom

George Murdoch Clelland