Speech Recognition vs. Speaker Recognition

People often get confused between speech recognition and speaker recognition. Let’s explore the difference.

Simply stated, speech recognition is the ability to recognize what a person is saying. Speaker recognition on the other hand is the ability to identify the person speaking.

Speech recognition has been in use for decades. Today, many organizations have replaced live agents with automated interactive voice response (IVR) systems. The IVRs may prompt users to speak their entries. For example, when calling directory assistance, users are prompted to speak the name of the individual or business that they are inquiring about. The system converts the spoken phrases to text, recites them back to the user for verification, and searches the database for a match.

Speaker recognition is a relatively new technology. Using voice biometrics, a speaker recognition system is able to identify, or verify the identity, of a person who has previously enrolled (i.e., provided a base voiceprint) in the system. A voiceprint is a stored set of measurable characteristics of a human voice that are unique to each individual. A sample voiceprint can be compared to a base voiceprint to identify, or verify the identity, of a person. Speaker recognition is an ideal way to verify the identity of a person remotely (e.g., performing a financial transaction via telephone).