s are avail- It is this capability that will alleviate the current lack of DTMF able. Obviously any change in the caller's voice due to a cold or telephones in Europe and allow voice processing technology to stress can increase the false rejections made. reach its full potential. There are two main variants; Speaker De- When perfected this feature will enable many over the telephone pendent Recognition (SDR) and Speaker Independent Recognition financial transactions to be completed securely. It is envisaged that (SIR). these systems will be used in conjunction with a limited number of Speaker dependent recognition systems need training to individ- live operators who will help people who have failed the security check. ual callers' voices, whereas speaker independent systems don't. Because of this SDR systems are falling out of favour due to the training chore, even taking into account the considerably increased Future directions complexity and cost of SIR systems. Speaker independent recognition systems analyse the caller's There is an continuing trend towards the miniaturisation of equip- speech and, in parallel for all the available words, match certain ment; increasing amounts of voice storage and easy to use voice Bibliography 37/9 service programming tools. To fully reach the potential that this artificial intelligence beyond current technology. Some how the technology has to reduce costs, it will need to be more closely machine must be programmed with an 'opinion' so that the thread integrated with the corporate I.T. infrastructure. The technology of of the conversation with the caller can be maintained. voice processing, through advanced system software, needs to be The future for voice processing technology is bright. The ability made more available to end users. to use the telephone as a cheap terminal device, able to access data One of the key technology breakthroughs will be comprehensive and allowing callers to command and control systems has not yet speech recognition technology capable of recognisin