Think beyond the limits! Speech-to-Text Solutions for the European Market SME View to Language Scalability Jimmy Kunzmann European Media Laboratory European Media Laboratory
European Media Laboratory GmbH (EML) EML - Private IT enterprise, founded 1997 - Focus: applied research & transfer assets to market - Recent Spin-Off - Heidelberg Mobil International GmbH founded 05/2007 - Mobile, Location-based Portal Technologies EML Focus since Mid 2006 - Human computer interaction for mobile devices - Speech-controlled Intelligent House & Media device - Speech-to-text transcription for Contact Center & Media Topics: - Motivate our decision for S2T for Contact Center - S2T Partner Network to become and stay successful? - How could the commission help? 2 European Media Laboratory Siegfried Kunzmann
Technical Motivation our niche TC-STAR - considering S2T only (2006) - Technology: parliamentary debates & some languages - Language building tools & engine: mostly research, for research purpose Parliamentary debates market: size=unclear (to EML) Which solutions are feasable: unclear Technical conclusions: - Building tools & engines for deployable solutions - Own tools & engine - Development efforts to start & stay leading edge is high (cost & people) - Long time to develop own robust, deployable engine for solutions - License tools & engine (ready for deployment) - Less influence to all inside details - Faster go to market Established: license agreements to core technology (language building & engines) - Few S2T languages available - Mostly for research purpose (English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, ) - Costly to develop for deployment quality Own assets: German Important: Grow partner network to increase language coverage - Language building for S2T solutions - Very little data available for Speech-to-text applications: in total, per language - Required: Large amounts of real data from conversations and communication POCs to collect real data: large amounts 3 European Media Laboratory Siegfried Kunzmann
Business Motivation Business principle: - All Projects require partner, established in THEIR market - Ability to introduce Speech-to-text technologies Telephone Conversations: Contact Center, Messaging, Search - Automated Quality / Activity Monitoring for Contact Center - Mining of human-human communications - Customer Inquiries (before / during / after call) - Measure & improve customer satisfaction - Speech Messaging & Search (voicemail, voice search) - Insight to messages, location-based search Conclusions: Lot s of new telephone-based, mobile services possible Large deployments require customized domains Speech Analytics is predicted to grow rapidly 4 European Media Laboratory Siegfried Kunzmann
European Speech Partner Network Finland PuHe S2T Partner Network UK Spain Language Coverage & Opportunities EML ASC UNISYS Contact Center Telco s OEM National Integrators ASC FI France Vecsys Italy Cedat85 UNISYS IBM ASC IT ASC FR OEM International Integrators Partner Network Principles: Drive your own local business Establish contacts to subsidiaries of your partner in other countries (e.g. ASC) Resell partner languages and applications to your international integrators 5 European Media Laboratory Siegfried Kunzmann
How could the commission help? (SME view) Infrastructure and tools to collect language data for a wide range of application E.g. Transcriber (http://trans.sourceforge.net/): manual annotation of speech signals Demand EU projects to provide collected language data? - To other projects & community - For affordable price (for SMEs and research) - In reasonable timeframe - For large number of languages and application domains enough data to build a initial language system Establish instruments to transfer language technologies from projects to a SME language technology community (SME Network?) Starts new language business, across countries, contacts Good language coverage == lots of deployed solution 6 European Media Laboratory Siegfried Kunzmann
Thank You Are there any questions? Feel free to contact us anytime 7 European Media Laboratory Siegfried Kunzmann