Gboard Now Offers Offline Voice Typing on Pixel Phones
Google's Gboard keyboard has introduced an exciting update for Pixel phone users: offline voice typing. The AI team revamped the speech recognizer so that it now operates directly on your device, eliminating the need to send data over the internet. This enhancement promises faster and more reliable voice typing, especially in areas with poor WiFi or mobile connectivity.
Traditionally, voice recognition systems break spoken words into smaller segments called phonemes. They then analyze these phonemes by considering their order and context to construct sentences. This process often leads to delays as the software processes what you've said. However, with the new Gboard update, Google's model now outputs characters one-by-one as you speak, creating spaces where necessary. This means Gboard recognizes individual letters in real-time, significantly reducing lag.
Currently, this feature is available only in American English and exclusively for Pixel devices. However, Google plans to expand support for additional languages and devices in the future.