Audio-interactive message exchange
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsLiane Aihara, Shane Landry, Lisa Stifelman, Madhusudan Chinthakunta, Anne Sullivan, Kathleen Lee
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A completely hands free exchange of messages, especially in portable devices, is provided through a combination of speech recognition, text-to-speech (TTS), and detection algorithms. An incoming message may be read aloud to a user and the user enabled to respond to the sender with a reply message through audio input upon determining whether the audio interaction mode is proper. Users may also be provided with options for responding in a different communication mode (e.g., a call) or perform other actions. Users may further be enabled to initiate a message exchange using natural language.
Claims20
A method executed at least in part in a computing device for facilitating audio-interactive message exchange, the method comprising:
- receiving an indication from a user to send a message;
- enabling the user to provide a recipient of the message and an audio content of the message through audio input;
- performing speech recognition on the received audio input;
- determining the recipient from the speech recognized audio input;
- and
- transmitting the speech recognized content of the message to the recipient as a text-based message.
A computing device capable of facilitating audio-interactive message exchange, the computing device comprising:
- a communication module;
- an audio input/output module;
- a memory;
- and
- a processor coupled to the communication module, the audio input/output module, and the memory adapted to execute a communication application that is configured to:
- receive a text-based message from a sender;
- generate an audio content from the received message by text-to-speech conversion;
- play the audio content and one of a name and an identifier associated with the sender to the user;
- provide at least one option to the user associated with the played audio content;
- and
- in response to receiving an audio input from the user, perform an action associated with the at least one option.
A computer-readable storage medium with instructions stored thereon for facilitating audio-interactive message exchange, the instructions comprising:
- activating an audio interaction mode automatically based on at least one from a set of:
- a setting of a communication device facilitating the message exchange, a location of a user, a status of the user, and a user input;
- receiving an audio indication from the user to send a text-based message;
- enabling the user to provide a recipient of the text-based message and an audio content of the message through natural language input;
- performing speech recognition on the received input;
- determining the recipient from the speech recognized content of the input;
- transmitting the speech recognized content of the message to the recipient as a text-based message;
- receiving a text-based message from a sender;
- generating an audio content from the received message by text-to-speech conversion;
- playing the audio content to the user;
- providing at least one option to the user associated with the played audio content;
- and
- in response to receiving another audio input from the user, performing an action associated with the other audio input.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.