Google's latest update to their ‘GBoard' digital keyboard has enabled on-device processing of speech-to-text writing, but only on their own Pixel devices.
Google initially released its updated and rebranded ‘GBoard' digital keyboard for iOS in May 2016, and curiously for the company's own Android OS seven months later in December 2016.
GBoard was Google’s answer to the increasingly advanced digital keyboards being released for Android, such as Swiftkey and Grammarly, and sported a new design as well as far greater features than their outdated ‘Google Keyboard’.
Like all digital keyboards had for years, GBoard maintained support for speech-to-text dictative writing and continued improving it as their deep learning neural networks improved.
However, despite the increasingly powerful AI features of modern System-on-a-Chip (SoC's) designs, such voice typing has remained a server-side feature which thus requires an internet connection and which is thus limited by internet speed, causing delays between speech and text.
Well in a new update to GBoard today, which only weighs in at 85MB, Google has transferred this functionality from the server to the device's own processing.
This is a big change and not only means dictation will work offline, but also more swiftly and reliably.
Unfortunately, for now, the feature is only being enabled on Google's own Pixel devices, however this is almost certainly just for testing/validation and the feature will likely be released to the wider public fairly soon.
It's a pretty neat little improvement that should really serve to assist the disabled and the preoccupied to write more accurately and easily.
Source: 9TO5Google
