Would voice commands ever be a thing?

[3DRelic]

Hey everyone,

I was just wondering if this was something that anyone has ever thought about for some programs? I mean, I have a million hotkeys, but you would think with todays technology, we could be using some type of voice command for some things. Even if we had to record them ourselves and it needed to be close to our recorded levels. Not saying it needs to be like an Alexa that can track a TON of different voices. Just wondering peoples thoughts on it? I mean obviously it is something that would need to be able to turn on and off in an office setting. But a setting like at home alone, I think it would be perfect. "Open LiveViewer" - 0 Clicks.

Thanks

[Despot]

What ? like 'render you fucker'...

[frankmci]

Back in the mid 90s there was a lot of hype over voice control for real production tools (various Dragon tools, Apple Speakable Items, Sphinx, etc.), and it seemed like it was going to be a real thing. In practice, though, it was just slow and awkward. Voice recognition has gotten a lot better with Siri, Alexa, Cortana, etc, but those interactions tend to be of a much slower pace and less precise than the kinds of commands and actions a fluent user does in a production app. I'm sure voice commands will eventually be available for pretty much everything, for accessibility reasons, but I doubt they will be used by many people in a production environment.

Natural language is slow and intentionally redundant, (Check out James Gleick's book, The Information, for a great deep-dive). Most of us can think and act far faster and more accurately than we can speak.