Nuance's Nina to enable iOS apps to authenticate users by the sound of their voice

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 37

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleSauce007 View Post


    I just don't know about all this Nina stuff on the iPhone...


    Is Nina a new Siri competitor?  If so, it won't make it through the App certification process.  It would confuse users since Siri can already do most of this stuff already.


     


    Apple will most likely use bio security methods such as finger print or retina scan instead of voice.


    Apple just purchased AuthenTec.  


     


    Time will tell.



     


    I am a Developer, so I registered for info updates -- I assume they'll notify us when the SDK is available.


     


    I suspect that Siri uses the same "Speech To Text" processing as Nina -- just hosted on different servers.


     


    The unique feature of each service is determining:



    • what the text means


    • what context should be taken into consideration


    • what is the user's intent


     


    This is the hard part.


     


    I think that Apple will find it difficult to disallow Nina on iDevices -- especially if it does a good job...   That would give Android a leg up.


     


     


    Finally, it is interesting that at a 50% premium, Nuance could be purchased for less than Google paid for MMI.

  • Reply 22 of 37
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member
    I hope it's better than Android's face recognition. My friend sits there for several seconds waiting for it to work and half the time it doesnt so she has to enter a password manually. Really!? Why not just enter the password first. There is also a disclaimer that similar-looking people may Be able to unlock the phone.

    Vox tech for password protection just seems like a poor solution. I presume it requires you to say a password of some sort. In which case, people are going to be walking around saying their passwords. How easy would it be to record someone accessing their phone, at say Starbucks or the grocery store? Especially if they have to take three tries at it?

    No thanks ... Maybe as an option when you are driving in the car by yourself and the iPhone has auto-locked, keeping you hands free. But in general ... I don't want people working for the government using voice passwords to access their technology ...
  • Reply 23 of 37

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by quinney View Post


    "Siri, do you think Nina has a big butt?"



     


    Ha!


     


    The real trick will be when you have 2 iPhones -- 1 with Nina, the other with Siri "talking" to each other... That will be a real cat fight... kinda' like the womens' team on Hells Kitchen...  Siri, Turn in your chef's jacket -- you're off the team!

  • Reply 24 of 37
    quinneyquinney Posts: 2,528member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mac_128 View Post



    I hope it's better than Android's face recognition. My friend sits there for several seconds waiting for it to work and half the time it doesnt so she has to enter a password manually. Really!? Why not just enter the password first. There is also a disclaimer that similar-looking people may Be able to unlock the phone.



    Vox tech for password protection just seems like a poor solution. I presume it requires you to say a password of some sort. In which case, people are going to be walking around saying their passwords. How easy would it be to record someone accessing their phone, at say Starbucks or the grocery store? Especially if they have to take three tries at it?



    No thanks ... Maybe as an option when you are driving in the car by yourself and the iPhone has auto-locked, keeping you hands free. But in general ... I don't want people working for the government using voice passwords to access their technology ...


    I don't think people would be saying passwords. It is the voice that is being authenticated, so any randomly generated phrase could be used.

  • Reply 25 of 37
    panupanu Posts: 135member


    Why are all the voices female? Have men gone extinct and I'm the only one left? I'd prefer a male voice because it is lower and has more harmonics, which is easier for older people to hear. Or have all the older people gone extinct also?

  • Reply 26 of 37

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Panu View Post


    Why are all the voices female? Have men gone extinct and I'm the only one left? I'd prefer a male voice because it is lower and has more harmonics, which is easier for older people to hear. Or have all the older people gone extinct also?



     


    In the UK the voice is male!

  • Reply 27 of 37
    normmnormm Posts: 653member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





    Or in the morning when you wake up. Or if someone records your voice. Or there is background noise. Biometrics make for cool sci-fi but not for good consumer tech.


     


    There are certainly enormous issues with how safe or reliable this would be.  I'm also worried about sending very private information to Nuance, or giving them control over who has password-level access to my bank accounts and other private data.   At the least, I want my bank to do its own authentication before it gives out my money!  Maybe they are thinking of using this as a second authentication factor, to be used in addition to passwords?

  • Reply 28 of 37
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mac_128 View Post



    I hope it's better than Android's face recognition. My friend sits there for several seconds waiting for it to work and half the time it doesnt so she has to enter a password manually. Really!? Why not just enter the password first. There is also a disclaimer that similar-looking people may Be able to unlock the phone.


    My son decided it was a cute trick but not dependable (in his case secret enough) as a method of unlocking his phone. At least he could require a "blink" to be sure it wasn't a picture of him tho, so I guess they changed it somewhere along the line.

  • Reply 29 of 37
    enjournienjourni Posts: 254member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by nulleggman View Post


    iPhone, recognize Picard, Jean-Luc. Alpha 2 clearance.



     


    Destruct sequence Alpha-One. 15 minutes, silent countdown. Enable.

  • Reply 30 of 37
    blah64blah64 Posts: 993member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post





    While I'm all for innovation, I'm not sure I'd be happy with being the first to jump into using voice recognition for authentication. Until there's a great deal of experience, it just sounds too risky for me to want to put my money at risk.


     


    Agreed.


     


    But it's also not just your money in that particular account being at risk; one could imagine setting up an account with a minimal balance, just to give things a try.


     


    There's a bigger problem it seems people aren't thinking about.  When you start using ANY service like this that accumulates and stores your biometrics, you're essentially allowing various corporations to fingerprint you.  How many people would be cool working with a bank (or a grocery store or Best Buy or ... ) that required you be fingerprinted before you could use their services, and then fingerprinted again before every transaction?


     


    This service is NOT local to your device, it's sending your personal biometric information to servers out in the real world, where corporations are keen to add to their customer profiles for many reasons (marketing is huge, of course), but also remember that no matter how good their security, these servers are subject to hacking attacks that we read about every couple months.  There are many vectors for these attacks, including various offline storage, data transfer, social engineering, etc.


     


    If your bank account or credit gets hacked, you're probably covered by one of their protection plans.  But if your voice biometrics are stolen, what are you going to do?!


     


    All this to save a couple seconds of entering passwords?  How effing lazy have we become?

  • Reply 31 of 37
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member


    "Ensign Authorization code: nine five weector weector two..."

  • Reply 32 of 37
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member

    Quote:


    If your bank account or credit gets hacked, you're probably covered by one of their protection plans.  But if your voice biometrics are stolen, what are you going to do?!



     


    Vocal cord surgery.  No problem at all.


     


    Oh, wait.  Yeah, maybe it's easier to just change your Ensign Authorization Code from "weector weector two" to "weector weector tree".

  • Reply 33 of 37
    panupanu Posts: 135member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post


     


    In the UK the voice is male!



    Wonderful! Freedom from the electronic Tupperware party! Now I'll have to move to the UK so I can hang out with the guys. Or the blokes. Whichever, I'm not fussy. 

  • Reply 34 of 37
    bagmanbagman Posts: 349member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post


     


    Ha!


     


    The real trick will be when you have 2 iPhones -- 1 with Nina, the other with Siri "talking" to each other... That will be a real cat fight... kinda' like the womens' team on Hells Kitchen...  Siri, Turn in your chef's jacket -- you're off the team!



    Or: Siri: " Nina looks fat on that Android phone, but oh-so svelte on this iPhone. However, I can't tell the difference with the Samsung phone."

  • Reply 35 of 37

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by EWTHeckman View Post



    If your voice is your password, what happens when you get a cold, or worse, laryngitis?


     


    I'm gonna teach it to recognize my beer belch... that way, never a problem.

  • Reply 36 of 37
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    sockrolid wrote: »
    "Ensign Authorization code: nine five weector weector two..."

    I re-watched Star Trek (2009) this past weekend. That movie is well made in every regard. No complaints from me.


    PS: Are you running the Rich Text Editor on this forum?
  • Reply 37 of 37
    freerangefreerange Posts: 1,597member
    The absolute last thing I would do is allow access to my financial accounts solely with voice commands. This is the absolute worst use of this technology. Voices can be recorded easily. And even imitated.
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