Google speeds up offline speech recognition with Gboard on Pixel phones – update

Google has added faster offline speech recognition to Gboard for Pixel phones. Thanks to the update, locally performed speech recognition takes up less space and is done more efficiently.

In a blog post, Google mentions that the search graph for a speech recognition engine was 2GB not so long ago. According to the internet giant, this is too big to put on every smartphone, which was one of the reasons for the requirement for online connectivity of speech recognition. Using new models and compression, Google managed to reduce the speech recognition model in recent years to 450MB initially and now 80MB.

The advantages of storing the speech recognition data offline are that the device is no longer dependent on the presence and quality of a network connection. In addition, the new form of speech recognition should work faster, so fast that it should be able to keep track of speech in real time.

In the blog post, Google sets out the history and details of their speech recognition for those interested. Initially, the faster offline speech recognition method will only be available on the Pixel phones and then only in Gboard, and furthermore only with the US English speech.

Update, Wednesday 15.55: Text has been adjusted to highlight the advancements in speed. The original article emphasized the offline capability, which has been around for some time.