Google launches improved voicemail transcriptions for Google Voice and Project

The idea of being able to read our voicemails in text form is both convenient and awesome, though in practice, it’s not usual to stare at a jumble of words trying to figure out if the caller was drunk or if it was simply a poor transcription. Thanks to those users who chose to help out, Google has just announced some major improvements are coming to the service that will help to deliver much more accurate transcriptions. Given how good Google’s overall voice recognition algorithms have become, Google Voice – and now Google Fi – transcripts always seemed atrociously bad.

If you want to sign-up for Google Voice (yes, it still exists and accepts new users), head here.

We asked users if they would kindly share some of their voicemails for research and system improvements.

According to Google, error rates of voicemail transcription in Google voice have been reduced by 49% after the update.

Google says it is using “long short-term memory deep recurrent neural networks” to cut down on these errors. Google mentions that much of this improvement should be attributed to the users who shared transcriptions, and with continued support they hope to make the whole process even better.

The company also said that the changes might not be big, but they will continue to work towards the development of voicemail transcription in Google voice over time.