Cortana (discontinued) vs. Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition

It's easy for anyone who is expecting some simple AI problems like fetching the keywords, understanding the intent, language translation, etc. to be solved from an existing database and all they need is to connect to their APIs via a subscription model. But for complex use cases, there is still room for improvement like customization of underlying AI models for a specific use case like identifying some unique identifiers with respect to industry.

Incentivized

My job requires that I produce lengthy and detailed minutes of meetings and Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition is absolutely ideally suited for this purpose. Notably, meetings are recorded and it is extremely easy to playback the recording of meetings while dictating notes. This is a remarkable saving in time and effort in producing minutes that might otherwise take a few days. I cannot think of any scenario where it would be less appropriate to use Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition other than in a situation where it is not possible to dictate for whatever reason.

Incentivized

• Being hosted in Azure solves a massive hosting problem
• The language understanding system has the ability to revolutionize many vertical markets
• Integrating with Cortana Analytics was really simple due to easy to understand documentation

Incentivized

• The main advantage is that it calibrates itself around your tone and accent.
• Integration with many apps and operative system is good.
• Integrating custom words and acronyms is very easy, so, over time, recognition becomes very precise and customized.

Incentivized

• More partnerships with colleges and schools to increase the workforce with technical knowledge (increase local workforce)
• Have more online training and documentation in other languages
• Have affordable prices for students

Incentivized

• Word recognition can always improve.
• Sometimes puts stray words or characters on the page if you forget to tell the microphone to go to sleep.
• Adds non-spoken words for no reason if there is a delay in speaking.

Incentivized

• Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition is not up to par with any of the other AI voice recognition technologies currently available
• The software is also very buggy and crashes frequently
• Punctuation also seems like an afterthought for Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition software--requiring the user to speak out each comma, period, etc.

Incentivized

Overall, its gives the functionality that I need in my role and can support with automating tasks. I mainly use it for autotext, to add blocks of text and it works universally across all applications. It saves time and works well in Windows 11. It works very well navigating the web.

Incentivized

One of the worst companies in terms of customer service getting the download file because of a laptop upgrade took me months of work. No jokes.

Incentivized

IBM Watson Assistant has been early into this market and has improved a lot over time compared to Azure AI Cortana. More documentation related to the services. But Ease of integration Azure AI ranks over IBM Watson Assistant. And again in terms of services offered under the ecosystem, Azure AI precedes IBM Watson Assitant.

Incentivized

Other than the more recent speech recognition tools from Microsoft, Google, etc., I have always used Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition. I was introduced to AI technology on an appraisal assignment. During the engagement, I had an opportunity to learn about the technology, and when I researched speech recognition software, the best reviews were of Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition. I purchased Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition and have stayed with the product.

Incentivized

• Difficult to ascertain the ROI as we are a software house who have developed a module in our application using Cortana. However for companies that use our software I would say the use of sentiment analysis in our application could free up at least 1 full time resource to be used elsewhere in their organisation.

Incentivized

• Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition has made it easier to dictate progress notes
• Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition has made seeing patients more efficient
• Nuance Dragon Speech Recognition was a little expensive for our smaller practice

Incentivized