The Mozilla Foundation, the creator of the Firefox browser, have launched a project called 'Common Voice', which the organization hopes to become the first open-source voice recognition engine out there.
What started out in June 2017, the project is released to the public in July. With it, Mozilla is asking users of the web to help train the engine by reading pieces of text.
Voice recognition system is a big deal in terms of technology. From Apple's Siri to Amazon's Alexa, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana and a few others, they are all using the technology to interpret human voice as input.
The problem for voice recognition technology is that it improves the more people use them. But with each voice recognition software living in closed systems, no one other than the popular ones on the market can benefit.
Mozilla here believes that voice recognition should be open to everyone. "We think that stifles innovation," Mozilla says, "so we’re launching Project Common Voice, a project to help make voice recognition open to everyone."
Since there is no way for anyone to convince either Apple, Google, Amazon or others to open their data to public, Mozilla launched Common Voice to "build an open-source voice recognition engine that anyone can use to make innovative apps for devices and the web."
With plans to release the Common Voice database into open source, the aim is to collect at least 10,000 hours of voice recordings. According to Mozilla's engineers, that would be enough to train their voice recognition system.
The more people donate their voice, the more sentences they choose to read, the better the system will become. Recorded voices will be available for anyone to listen, but that's the point. People that donate their voice will help create an open system.
As a matter of fact, the project creates a chance that one day there will be more apps and services that use voice recognition beyond just Apple, Google, Amazon and the few others. Mozilla also created Common Voice Privacy Notice and Terms for those that are concerned about how their voice will be used.
Besides donating their voice, or if they're not willing to donate, people can still help by listening and validating the accuracy of others' voice recordings.