MSDN

Microsoft has been researching and developing speech technologies for over a decade. In 1993, the company hired Xuedong (XD) Huang, Fil Alleva, and Mei-Yuh Hwang—three of the four people responsible for the Carnegie Mellon University Sphinx-II speech recognition system, which achieved fame in the speech world in 1992 due to its unprecedented accuracy. Right from the start, with the formation of the Speech API (SAPI) 1.0 team in 1994, Microsoft was driven to create a speech technology that was both accurate and accessible to developers through a powerful API. The team has continued to grow and over the years has released a series of increasingly powerful speech platforms.

In recent years, Microsoft has placed an increasing emphasis on bringing speech technologies into mainstream usage. This focus has led to products such as Speech Server, which is used to implement speech-enabled telephony systems, and Voice Command, which allows users to control Windows Mobile® devices using speech commands. So it should come as no surprise that the speech team at Microsoft has been far from idle in the development of Windows Vista™. The strategy of coupling powerful speech technology with a powerful API has continued right through to Windows Vista.

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