System and method for enhancing voice-enabled search based on automated demographic identification

A system comprising:

• a processor;
• a first module controlling the processor to receive a speech query from a user;
• a second module controlling the processor to identify demographic information about the user from the speech query;
• a question-answering engine controlling the processor to generate an answer to the speech query based on the demographic information.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to generate answers to a spoken query, the instructions comprising:

• receiving a spoken query from a user;
• identifying demographic metadata from the spoken query in parallel with speech recognition of the spoken query;
• and
• passing the demographic metadata to a question-answering engine that also receives speech recognition output of the spoken query and generates at least one answer in response to the spoken query.