Query by babbling

Abstract

The Spoken Web, an interconnected collection of spoken content accessed through audio-only mobile phones, holds the promise of transforming information access for users in developing regions. The scale of the Spoken Web is, however, limited because current speech retrieval technology is only affordably deployable for a handful of languages. This paper proposes rethinking the conventional keyword query paradigm to instead develop systems that support a longer, richer, and more fluid interaction style that is better suited to both the affordances of spoken interaction and to the limitations of current speech technology.