How to Teach Your New Smart Speaker to Understand Your Voice

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Not all smart speakers are the same. In fact, some have a hard time meeting the requirements to be called “smart”, but they will learn to better answer your questions if they understand what you are talking about.

Investment firm Loup Ventures recently completed performance audits for Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana, looking at how each assistant answered 800 different questions. He also ran this test last year and compared the results to see how each smart speaker improved.

While all the assistants tested have understood over 99 percent of the questions asked by analysts this year, that doesn’t mean everyone always has a great conversation with their smart speaker. If yours is struggling to understand what you’re saying, he won’t have much of a chance of giving you the right answers. We’ll get to workout tips soon. First, here’s a quick look at the Loup Ventures benchmark results:

  • # 1: Google Assistant Google Assistant answered 88 percent of the questions correctly (up from 81 percent on the December 2017 test) and understood all 800 questions. It was Loup Ventures’ best digital analysis assistant.
  • Runner-up: Siri Apple’s Siri answered 75 percent of the questions correctly this year, up from 52 percent last year.
  • Third Place: Alexa Amazon’s Alexa answered 64 percent of the questions correctly last year and 73 percent this year.
  • Fourth Place: Microsoft’s Cortana Cortana got 56 percent correct answers last year and 63 percent correct answers this year.

How to teach Alexa to learn your voice

  1. Open the Alexa smartphone app.
  2. Tap the menu icon in the upper left corner to open the sidebar, then go to Settings> Alexa Account> Recognizable Voices.
  3. Make sure Auto Voice Recognition is turned on, then tap Your Voice.
  4. Click Get Started, then Select Device and click on the echo you want to train (be sure to turn off or turn off any other echoes you have nearby).
  5. Follow the prompts by saying the phrases aloud as directed.
  6. After you have completed the exercise, click Finish to finish. Echo will process your voice data (this will take about 10 minutes).
  7. You must also provide the location of your Echo / Alexa devices under Settings> Account Echo> Echo Location and Settings> Your Locations in the app to get the best results for your local and navigation questions. …

Tip: You can submit Alexa performance feedback to Amazon via the Alexa app. The home screen of the Alexa smartphone app displays a chronological stream of “cards”, with each card representing a command that you have given to the connected Alexa device (s). You can click yes or no on each card to tell Amazon if Alexa understood your command correctly or not.

How to train Google Assistant

  1. Press and hold the Home button on your Android device until the Google Assistant window appears.
  2. Tap the compass icon , tap the More icon (three dots above each other) in the upper-right corner, and then tap Settings> Assistant.
  3. Click “Language” and set the appropriate language. If yours is not displayed, click “Add language”. Go back to the Assistant tab and do the same in the Assistant Voice section. Make sure the languages ​​and regions are the same on the Language and Assistant Voice screens.
  4. Return to the Assistant tab, then scroll down to Assistant Devices and tap the device you want to teach.
  5. Click Voice Model .
  6. If you had a previous voice model, remove it by clicking Remove Voice Sample. If not, click Re-train Voice Model to start the training process.
  7. Follow the onscreen instructions while saying phrases in your normal conversational tone (in a quiet place).
  8. When you’re done, scroll down and tap “Match Voice” and then tap ” Add Devices . “ Select the device you want to associate with your voice (the device must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your phone). Follow the instructions on the screen.

These other steps are optional, but enabling them can improve your experience with the Google Assistant.

  • On the Assistant tab, tap Continue Calling and enable a setting that allows you to ask Google Assistant more questions without having to repeat “Ok Google” or hold the Home button each time.
  • On the “Personal information” tab, be sure to indicate your home and work addresses, modes of travel and payment methods. Set up nicknames or shortcuts for important contacts so that Google Assistant knows who you mean, such as mom or dad.

How to train Siri

  1. On your iOS device, go to Settings> Siri & Search .
  2. Make sure the correct language / region is selected for Language and Siri Voice .
  3. Turn off Listen to Hey Siri, then turn it back on.
  4. Follow the directions and speak when prompted.
  5. Once you’ve done that, go back to Settings> Siri & Search , then go through all the apps you want to connect to Siri and make sure Use with Siri is turned on in the app’s settings.
  6. Finally, go to Settings> Privacy> Location Services and make sure Location Services and Share my location are enabled. This way Siri will know where you are and when you are at home (if you did not enter your home address on your iOS device, you can do this under your name in the Contacts app. You can also save addresses for other places. For example, work , school, etc.)

Tip: Don’t be afraid to correct Siri when she mispronounces a word. You can say, “Siri, you don’t say that,” and then say the word with the correct pronunciation. Siri will then suggest a list of pronunciations based on your voice. Choose the one that best matches the word, or click Tell Siri Again to try again.

How to train Cortana

On your PC:

  1. Click or tap the Windows search bar to open Cortana.
  2. Click or tap the settings icon .
  3. A new “Talk to Cortana” window will appear. In this window, turn on “Hey Cortana.”
  4. Cortana will ask your permission. Click Sure.
  5. Back in the Talk to Cortana window, click Find out how I say Hey Cortana.
  6. Follow the instructions.

On your Windows 10 phone or tablet:

  1. Click or tap the Windows search bar to open Cortana.
  2. Click or tap the notebook icon> Settings
  3. In the Settings menu, turn on “Hey Cortana.”
  4. Select “Learn my voice”
  5. Follow the instructions

Cortana will work best if your language and region settings match correctly, as Cortana is only available in certain languages ​​for certain regions, according to the Microsoft help page :

  • Australia: English
  • Brazil: Portuguese
  • Canada: English / French
  • China: Chinese (Simplified)
  • France: French
  • Germany: German
  • India: English
  • Italy: Italian
  • Japan: Japanese
  • Mexico: Spanish
  • Spain: Spanish
  • United Kingdom: English
  • USA: English

You can double check this and make changes easily on both Windows PC and mobile devices.

On PC:

  1. Open the Windows Start menu, then click Settings> Time & Language> Region & Language.
  2. Make sure your region and Windows display language are correct; otherwise, choose the correct option from the drop-down menus. If your language is missing, you can download a new language pack by clicking “Add language” and choosing the one you want to install. It will take a few minutes to download and apply the new language pack.
  3. Then select the Speech option and make sure the Speech Language option matches the Windows display language.
  4. If you changed any of these settings, you will need to log out of Windows and then log back in (you can also restart your computer to apply the changes).

On Windows 10 mobile devices:

  1. Open the settings menu of your device.
  2. Go to Time & Language> Language . Change the selected language if necessary. If your language is not listed, tap Add Language and tap the language pack you want to install.
  3. In the Speech section, make sure the language you selected matches the language from the previous step.
  4. After making these changes, you may need to restart your device.

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