Apple has been granted a patent for “Determining Whether Speech Input Is Intended For A Digital Assistant.”
About the patent
The patent relates generally to intelligent automated assistants (think Siri) and, more specifically, to determining whether speech input is intended for an intelligent automated assistant. In the patent Apple says such assistants can allow users to interact with devices or systems using natural language in spoken and/or text forms. For example, a user can provide a speech input containing a user request to a digital assistant operating on an electronic device.
The digital assistant can interpret the user’s intent from the speech input and operationalize the user’s intent into tasks. The tasks can then be performed by executing one or more services of the electronic device, and a relevant output responsive to the user request can be returned to the user.
However, if you have various Apple devices (Macs, HomePods, Apple TV 4K, etc.), they may get “confused” as to which of them a digital command is directed. Apple wants to overcome such issues.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “An example process includes: receiving a speech input representing a user utterance; determining, based on a textual representation of the speech input, a first score corresponding to a type of the user utterance; determining, based on the textual representation of the speech input, a second score representing a correspondence between the user utterance and a domain recognized by a digital assistant; determining, based on the first score and the second score, whether the speech input is intended for the digital assistant; in accordance with a determination that the speech input is intended for the digital assistant: initiating, by the digital assistant, a task based on the speech input; and providing an output indicative of the initiated task.”
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