Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Last updated
Developer(s) Nuance Communications
Initial releaseJune 1997;27 years ago (1997-06)
Stable release
16 / February 28, 2023;18 months ago (2023-02-28)
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Available in8 languages
Type Speech recognition
License Proprietary
Website www.nuance.com

Dragon NaturallySpeaking (also known as Dragon for PC, or DNS) [1] is a speech recognition software package developed by Dragon Systems of Newton, Massachusetts, which was acquired in turn by Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, Nuance Communications, and Microsoft. It runs on Windows personal computers. Version 15 (Professional Individual and Legal Individual), [2] which supports 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7, 8 and 10, was released in August 2016. [3] [4]

Contents

Features

Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses a minimal user interface. As an example, dictated words appear in a floating tooltip as they are spoken (though there is an option to suppress this display to increase speed), and when the speaker pauses, the program transcribes the words into the active window at the location of the cursor. (Dragon does not support dictating to background windows.) The software has three primary areas of functionality: voice recognition in dictation with speech transcribed as written text, recognition of spoken commands, and text-to-speech: speaking text content of a document. Voice profiles can be accessed by different computers in a networked environment, although the audio hardware and configuration must be identical to those of the machine generating the configuration. The Professional version allows creation of custom commands to control programs or functions not built into NaturallySpeaking.

History

Dr. James Baker laid out the description of a speech understanding system called DRAGON in 1975. [5] In 1982 he and Dr. Janet M. Baker, his wife, founded Dragon Systems to release products centered around their voice recognition prototype. [6] He was President of the company and she was CEO.

DragonDictate was first released for DOS, and utilized hidden Markov models, a probabilistic method for temporal pattern recognition. At the time, the hardware was not powerful enough to address the problem of word segmentation, and DragonDictate was unable to determine the boundaries of words during continuous speech input. Users were forced to enunciate one word at a time, clearly separated by a small pause after each word. DragonDictate was based on a trigram model, and is known as a discrete utterance speech recognition engine. [7]

Dragon Systems released NaturallySpeaking 1.0 as their first continuous dictation product in 1997. [8]

The company was then purchased in June 2000 by Lernout & Hauspie, a Belgium-based corporation that was subsequently found to have been perpetrating financial fraud. [9] Following the all-share deal advised by Goldman Sachs, Lernout & Hauspie declared bankruptcy in November 2000. The deal was not originally supposed to be all stock and the unavailability of the Goldman Sachs team to advise concerning the change in terms was one of the grounds of the Bakers' subsequent lawsuit. The Bakers had received stock worth hundreds of millions of US dollars, but were only able to sell a few million dollars' worth before the stock lost all its value as a result of the accounting fraud. The Bakers sued Goldman Sachs for negligence, intentional misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty, which in January 2013 led to a 23-day trial in Boston. The jury cleared Goldman Sachs of all charges. [10] Following the bankruptcy of Lernout & Hauspie, the rights to the Dragon product line were acquired by ScanSoft of Burlington, Massachusetts, also a Goldman Sachs client. In 2005 ScanSoft launched a de facto acquisition of Nuance Communications, and rebranded itself as Nuance. [11]

As of 2012, LG Smart TVs included voice recognition feature powered by the same speech engine as Dragon NaturallySpeaking. [12] In 2014, following the discontinuation of DragonDictate for Mac, a product dating back to Nuance's 2010 purchase of MacSpeech Dictate, NaturallySpeaking gained Mac compatibility, though Mac support was later terminated in 2018. [13]

In 2021, Microsoft announced plans to acquire Nuance, and therefore Dragon NaturallySpeaking. [14] The acquisition completed in March 2022. [15] [16]

Versions

Dragon Naturally Speaking VersionRelease dateEditionsOperating Systems Supported
1.0April 1997PersonalWindows 95, NT 4.0.
2.0November 1997Standard, Preferred, DeluxeWindows 95, NT 4.0
3.0October 1998Point & Speak, Standard, Preferred, Professional (with optional Legal and Medical add-on products)Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0.
4.0August 4, 1999Essentials, Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, Medical, MobileWindows 95, 98, NT 4.0 SP3+.
5.0August 2000Essentials, Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, MedicalWindows 98, Me, NT 4.0 SP6+, 2000.
6.0November 15, 2001Essentials, Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, Medical
7.0March 2003Essentials, Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, MedicalWindows 98SE, Me, NT4 SP6+, 2000, XP.
8.0November 2004Essentials, Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, MedicalWindows Me (Only Standard and Preferred editions), Windows 2000 SP4+, Windows XP SP1+.
9.0July 2006Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, Medical, SDK client, SDK server,Windows 2000 SP4+, XP SP1+.
9.5January 2007Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, Medical, SDK client, SDK serverWindows 2000 SP4+, XP SP1+, Vista (32-bit).
10.0August 7, 2008Essentials, Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, MedicalWindows 2000 SP4+, XP SP2+ (32-bit), Vista (32-bit). Server 2003.
10.1March 2009Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, MedicalWindows 2000 SP4+, XP SP2+ (32-bit), Vista (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2003.
11.0August 2010Home, Premium, Professional, LegalWindows XP SP2+ (32-bit), Vista SP1+ (32-bit and 64-bit), 7 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2003, 2008.
11.02011SDK client (DSC), SDK server (DSS)Windows XP SP2+ (32-bit only), Vista SP1+ (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 and 2008, SP1, SP2 and R2 (32-bit and 64-bit)
11.5June 2011Home, Premium, Professional, LegalWindows XP SP2+ (32-bit), Vista SP1+ (32-bit and 64-bit), 7 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2003, 2008.
11.0August 2011Medical (Dragon Medical Practice Edition)Windows XP SP2+ (32-bit), Vista SP1+ (32-bit and 64-bit), 7 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2003, 2008.
12.0October 2012Home, Premium, Professional, LegalWindows XP SP3+ (32-bit), Vista SP2+ (32-bit and 64-bit), 7 (32 and 64-bit), 8 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012.
12.5February 2013Home, Premium, Professional, LegalWindows XP SP3+ (32-bit), Vista SP2+ (32-bit and 64-bit), 7 (32 and 64-bit), 8 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012.
12June 2013Medical (Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2)Windows XP SP3+ (32-bit), Vista SP2+ (32-bit and 64-bit), 7 (32 and 64-bit), 8 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012.
13August 2014Home, Premium, Professional, and Legal.7 (32 and 64-bit), 8.1 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012. Mac OS X 10.6+
13September 2015Medical (UK, French, German) (Dragon Medical Practice Edition 3)7 (32 and 64-bit), 8.1 (32 and 64-bit), 10 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012. Mac OS X 10.6+
14September 2015Professional (individual, and Group)7 (32 and 64-bit), 8.1 (32 and 64-bit), 10 (32 and 64-bit). Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012. Mac OS X 10.6+. Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012.
15August 16, 2016Dragon Professional Individual; Dragon Legal Individual; Dragon Professional Individual for Mac (version 6)7, 8.1, 10 (32- and 64-bit); Server 2008 R2, Server 2012 R2. Mac OS X 0.11, macOS 10.12
15May 1, 2017Dragon Professional Group (Languages: English US and German only)7, 8.1, and 10, 32-bit and 64-bit
15January 22, 2018Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 (Languages: English US)
16February 28, 2023Dragon ProfessionalWindows 10, 11, Server 2016, 2019 and 2022

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 is available in the following languages; UK English, US English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Japanese (aka "Dragon Speech 11" in Japan).

See also

Notes

    Related Research Articles

    Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition or speech-to-text (STT). It incorporates knowledge and research in the computer science, linguistics and computer engineering fields. The reverse process is speech synthesis.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Dictaphone</span> American producer of dictation machines

    Dictaphone was an American company founded by Alexander Graham Bell that produced dictation machines. It is now a division of Nuance Communications, based in Burlington, Massachusetts.

    IBM ViaVoice was a range of language-specific continuous speech recognition software products offered by IBM. The current version is designed primarily for use in embedded devices. The latest stable version of IBM Via Voice was 9.0 and was able to transfer text directly into Microsoft Word.

    Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (L&H) was a Belgium-based speech recognition technology company, founded by Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, that went bankrupt in 2001 because of a fraud engineered by the management. The company was based in Ypres, Flanders, in what was later called Flanders Language Valley.

    Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">MacSpeech</span> Speech recognition etc. software company

    MacSpeech, Inc. was a New Hampshire-based technology company that produced software-based speech recognition and voice dictation solutions for the Apple ecosystem. The company's products included iListen, MacSpeech Dictate, MacSpeech Dictate Medical, MacSpeech Dictate Legal, MacSpeech Dictate International, and MacSpeech Scribe. On February 12, 2010, Nuance Communications, Inc. acquired MacSpeech.

    A voice-user interface (VUI) enables spoken human interaction with computers, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device is a device controlled with a voice user interface.

    DragonDictate, Dragon Dictate, or Dragon for Mac is proprietary speech recognition software. The older program, DragonDictate, was originally developed by Dragon Systems for Microsoft Windows, and was replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows. It was later acquired by Nuance Communications. Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 is supported only on Mac OS X 10.6. Nuance's other products for Mac include MacSpeech Scribe.

    The Speech Application Programming Interface or SAPI is an API developed by Microsoft to allow the use of speech recognition and speech synthesis within Windows applications. To date, a number of versions of the API have been released, which have shipped either as part of a Speech SDK or as part of the Windows OS itself. Applications that use SAPI include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Agent and Microsoft Speech Server.

    iListen, developed by MacSpeech, is a speech recognition program for the Apple Macintosh. In 2006, iListen was the only third-party software that allowed inputting text using one's voice that works on newer Macintosh models. Its competitors were Apple's own speech recognition software ; Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance, running under Windows virtualization software such as Parallels Desktop for Mac or VMware Fusion; and the discontinued speech recognition program ViaVoice by Nuance/IBM.

    As of the early 2000s, several speech recognition (SR) software packages exist for Linux. Some of them are free and open-source software and others are proprietary software. Speech recognition usually refers to software that attempts to distinguish thousands of words in a human language. Voice control may refer to software used for communicating operational commands to a computer.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Speech Recognition</span> Speech recognition software

    Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) is speech recognition developed by Microsoft for Windows Vista that enables voice commands to control the desktop user interface, dictate text in electronic documents and email, navigate websites, perform keyboard shortcuts, and operate the mouse cursor. It supports custom macros to perform additional or supplementary tasks.

    The Voice Navigator was the first voice recognition device for command and control of a graphical user interface. The system was developed by Articulate Systems, Inc. originally designed for the Apple Macintosh Plus and released in 1989. Subsequent versions were created for Microsoft Windows. Articulate Systems, Inc. was acquired by Dragon Systems in 1998.

    MacSpeech Scribe is speech recognition software for Mac OS X designed specifically for transcription of recorded voice dictation. It runs on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The software transcribes dictation recorded by an individual speaker. Typically, the speaker will record their dictation using a digital recording device such as a handheld digital recorder, mobile smartphone, or desktop or laptop computer with a suitable microphone. MacSpeech Scribe supports specific audio file formats for recorded dictation: .aif, .aiff, .wav, .mp4, .m4a, and .m4v.

    Dragon Dictation started as speech recognition application for Apple's iOS platforms, including iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The app provided automatic speech-to-text capabilities. It was developed by Nuance Communications, and released in December 2009 as a free app. It is now commonly found licensed in vehicle infotainment systems and healthcare equipment.

    Tazti is a speech recognition software package developed and sold by Voice Tech Group, Inc. for Windows personal computers. The most recent package is version 3.2, which supports Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8 and Windows 7 64-bit editions. Earlier versions of Tazti supported Windows Vista and Windows XP. PC video game play by voice, controlling PC applications and programs by voice and creating speech commands to trigger a browser to open web pages, or trigger the Windows operating system to open files, folders or programs are Tazti's primary features. Earlier versions of Tazti included a lite Dictation feature that is eliminated from the latest version.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Speech Processing Solutions</span> Manufacturer of speech processing devices

    Speech Processing Solutions is an international electronics company headquartered in Vienna, Austria. The company designs, develops, manufactures and markets speech processing devices, such as those used in digital dictation and speech recognition. Speech Processing Solutions was formed on 1 July 2012. Philips Speech Processing was part of the Philips Consumer Lifestyle sector. Speech Processing Solutions is now an official licensee of the Philips brand. The company has subsidiaries in the US, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and Germany, and employs around 170 people worldwide.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Braina</span> Intelligent personal assistant & dictation software

    Braina is a virtual assistant and speech-to-text dictation application for Microsoft Windows developed by Brainasoft. Braina uses natural language interface, speech synthesis, and speech recognition technology to interact with its users and allows them to use natural language sentences to perform various tasks on a computer. The name Braina is a short form of "Brain Artificial".

    Michael Phillips is the CEO and co-founder of Sense Labs and a pioneer in machine learning, including mobile speech recognition and text-to-speech technology.

    References

    1. ↑ Sarnataro, Valerie (2012-11-08). "Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) 12 Review". technologyguide.com. Technology Guide. Retrieved 2013-07-25.
    2. ↑ "Nuance Announces Major New Releases of Dragon for Windows and Mac OS X" . Retrieved 2016-08-22.
    3. ↑ "Nuance product support for Microsoft Windows Vista". Archived from the original on 2009-12-15. Retrieved 2009-12-15.
    4. ↑ "Nuance product support for Microsoft Windows 7". 2010. Retrieved 16 Aug 2010.
    5. ↑ Baker, James K. (1975). "The DRAGON System - An Overview". IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. 23 (1): 24–29. doi:10.1109/TASSP.1975.1162650.
    6. ↑ "History of Speech Recognition and Transcription Software" . Retrieved 2013-07-12.
    7. ↑ "DragonDictate product information" . Retrieved 2010-02-03.
    8. ↑ "Dragon NaturallySpeaking 1.0 released" . Retrieved 2010-02-03.
    9. ↑ "Dragon Systems purchased by Lernout & Hauspie". New York Times. 2001-05-07. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
    10. ↑ "Goldman Is Cleared Over a Sale Gone Awry". New York Times. 2013-01-23. Retrieved 2013-01-23.
    11. ↑ "ScanSoft and Nuance to Merge". 2005-05-09. Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
    12. ↑ "Samsung and LG smart TVs share your voice data behind the fine print". ConsumerReports. 2015-02-09. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
    13. ↑ "Dragon Professional Individual for Mac End of Life". 2005-05-09. Archived from the original on 2018-10-28. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
    14. ↑ "Microsoft makes $20bn bet on speech AI firm Nuance". BBC News . BBC. 2021-04-12. Retrieved 2022-03-07.
    15. ↑ Bass, Dina (2022-03-04). "Microsoft Vaults Further Into Health-Care Services With Closing of Nuance Deal". Bloomberg Technology . Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 2022-03-07.
    16. ↑ Anand, Praharsha (2022-03-07). "Microsoft completes $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance". ITPro. Future plc . Retrieved 2022-03-07.
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