Voice assistants got worse at understanding my accent over 4 years

Honestly, back in 2021 my Google Home in Austin, Texas got my Texas drawl almost every time. Now I have to repeat simple commands like "turn on the porch light" three or four times, and it keeps mixing up words. I think the newer models are trained on clearer, more standard speech patterns from big data sets, not local quirks. Anyone else notice their smart speaker regressed with regional dialects after updates?

2 comments

2 Comments

patwest5d ago

Mine does the exact same thing with my Georgia accent, drives me crazy.

elliotr391d ago

Look at it from the other side for a second. Maybe the assistants got better at filtering out noise and mumbling, not worse. I used to have to repeat myself constantly back in 2020, and now my older relatives with thick Boston accents get picked up way more often than they did before. Also, firmware updates usually tighten up how they process sounds, so short regional vowel shifts might just fall outside the new margins. Half the time people blame the speaker, but their mic placement changed or the room got louder, that alone screws everything up.