Why is Apple speech recognition so lousy and getting worse?

I have also been an Apple user and also blind since day one, I really wish that Apple would improve on dictate. Echoing your last comment Apple have gone to great lengths to make everything accessible for everyone and they have done us proud over the years, but this dictate feature on the iPhone is driving me mad because I’m currently having to correct any errors that the dictate feature makes, which makes texting really long and laborious. Therefore, I can empathise what you have stated, stay safe X

I know that we all have different opinions when it comes to Siri and dictation. I personally do not experience many problems with dictation. It isn’t perfect. but it isn’t very often that I have to make corrections. iOS has been getting better and better for me as far as dictation is concerned. I realize that this isn’t the case for everyone, but I just wanted to point out that it does work for some of us for the most part. I think that dictation will get even better with iOS 16. At least that is my hope. I’m going to read this comment back before I post it. I’m just letting you know that I did not edit it in any way. So if there are any mistakes you will see them in the comment. I’m posting this as is and I have made no corrections. I have dictated this comment completely with my voice, and have not written anything using the keyboard or any other method. I’m using iOS 16 at the moment to dictate this, but even in iOS 15 I still had very good results using dictation

I saw one mistake in my previous comment. Dictation did not put a period at the very end. I didn’t correct it because I said that I was not going to make any corrections. I just wanted to point it out to you.

Sent a text last night, saying my math sucks. well, you can guess what it said. good thing it was to my boyfriend and not anyone else. I find if you pause as you speak a little, speak slowly, I speak wicked fast, it seems to be easier. I still love my inappropriate things. I mean who doesn't and should read, before sending? I'm terrible but I am getting better at it. I don't want to tell something a Grammy winning celeb that looks like a four year old wrote it. :)

Dictation works well 90% of the time for me and it wasn't enough for me to continue using it! I switched to Braille screen input which can be added to the rotor and this has been a game changer for me. I can say that I can type as fast as any other sighted person. I now send longer replies to messages and text much more frequently thanks to this keyboard. It took me a while to get the hang of it but it was worth it in the end. Even my iPad is getting a fair bit of usage as I use to hate using the large onscreen keyboard. I really urge people to give this keyboard a shot and you will be surprised by how quickly you can actually type on your devices. I'm afraid, dictation is a thing of the past for me.

As someone that uses dictation many times a day on their iPhone, I too have noticed the decline in accuracy.

I believe that this started after Apple changed the way IOS processes the voice dictation.

Previously it used to send your voice to the cloud and it was processed there before the text being sent back to your phone.

Now, in a bid to increase speed with Siri and voice dictation when out of signal, all the processing is done on the phone itself, what they call "on device processing".

I'm guessing the analytics and power of the servers used in the cloud were more powerful than the on pohone processing, which is why it's now more prone to errors.

I'd personally like Apple to introduce an option where we can decide where our voice recordings are processed.
So you'd have the on phone option for reliability and the in the cloud option for accuracy.

Hello everyone hope everybody is doing well on this fantastic day! as per my experience, The dictation works for me most of the time; however, It types sometimes the words which I have not spoken. For the example the verb are, instead of the first person I. besides that, I am Okay.

Observations…

My Apple Watch dictates literally perfectly. It is accurate even if I am speaking at an incredibly fast speed.

My MacBook Pro is very accurate with dictation.

My iPhone Pro 12 max sucks so badly with dictation that I want to throw it out the window anytime I try to dictate anything. I’ve tried every setting and nothing changes. It’s still so bad I want to throw it out the window no matter what.

I just got some AirPod pros, and when I use them to dictate on the iPhone Pro 12 max, the dictation is very good.

So, my conclusion is, even though the microphones on the iPhone Pro 12 max sound fine when recorded voice is listen to, there is something wrong with them regarding dictation. The phone is supposed to have incredibly good microphones but there is something wrong with the way the microphones and dictation work together.

I’ve looked on Apple forums and everybody complains about the dictation and Apple Support has become more and more useless in the past five years as they become a larger company. I asked them about the problem and they have a hard time with basic things. Just wondering if most people complaining about the dictation are using the phones and for some reason all of them have the same issue. Microphones/iOS equals crap dictation.

Anyway, just thought I would throw my best guess in the ring. here’s hoping that iOS 16 changes things. Seems like I read that they were doing something with the speech and dictation engine in the upcoming release.

I thought it was just me so I’m glad people agree. I think my point is that it’s getting worse. It was good, but now it is not so good. I thought over time it would improve as most technologies too. I’ve been very disappointed.

Same. I use dictation in mmy iPad with 16 and is great. Hope when iOS 16 comes and I install it in 12 pro it be good.

I can only agree with your statement. I myself am also a long time user of loads of Apple devices. I own a MacBook Pro and two different iPads on top of all the iPhones I've had in the past. I suffer from muscular dystrophy and that is why I desperately need speech recognition too as I cannot use my hands to type on a keyboard anymore. I've got a PhD in Sociology and I am a researcher at CNRS French Research Center. As you could imagine writing is the main activity of my work, and I have been having a really hard time doing so for years now.
Despite hundreds of hours of research, I still haven't found the solution to write in all the various contexts I have to do it. Unlike you, my experience with Dragon NaturallySpeaking has been so-so. So, in the end, I ended up finding a solution with the proper mic, with dragon naturally speaking, installed with parallel desktop on my Mac. It barely works when I dictate in my quiet room, but accuracy drastically drops whenever I try to dictate in a more noisy environment.
Last thing I discovered is the speech recognition tool OpenAI produced that uses artificial intelligence and hundreds of thousands of hours to build a very powerful algorithm. You might have heard of it, it's called Whisper. And the results are just amazing. That is completely game and life-changing. I can not only write in French again, but also in English or Spanish, which I speak fluently, but would never try to make Dragon understand, as it has already having a hard time understanding me in my mother tongue already.
I can't understand either why Apple still hasn't produced its own powerful tool that could help on a daily basis so many users with or without disability. I've read somewhere that Next OS would take direct advantage on artificial intelligence (I guess that is a matter of fashion). So maybe speech recognition will benefit it the same way. I am crossing fingers for you too my friend.
Have a look at the app called MacWhisperer. It's a little tool. Basic version is free. And you only have to pay 10 bucks to get the Pro version, which gives you a level of accuracy I had never seen before. Do try, you will be amazed, I swear. Don't hesitate to give me feedback, and to tell me if ever you received answers from folks at Apple after your notes.
All the best. Cheers.

Want to start over?
Go to Settings > Siri & Search, turn off Listen for “Hey Siri,” then turn on Listen for “Hey Siri” again. SIRI will learn. Start slowly. Speak slowly. Only very gradually speak faster, and by gradually, I mean over weeks or months.
To change Siri accessibility settings, see Use accessibility features with Siri on iPhone.
If Siri doesn’t work as expected on your iPhone, see the Apple Support article If “Hey Siri” isn’t working on your iPhone or iPad.

Siri has went to crap Google assistant beats it hands down. Siri is no longer reliable

I followed the steps I outlined above. No more than a minor problem here and there. Siri works fine on my iPhone 10S.

Hi! I find the dictation really, really bad. I cannot get it to distinguish between I and eye or me and May or my, and it often just duplicates entire sentences without warning. I am partially sighted so it would be great to be able to dictate messages/notes/emails without wanting to smash my phone.
I also don’t really understand why the voice control feature works the way it does- it provides hints if you don’t get the command exactly how they expect, which would be fantastic except that they are only written. I haven’t been able to find a way to get the hints to be said out loud (I have tried the screen reader/Siri/settings etc). Any tips super welcome.

I haven't had coffee, so this might not even be the right answer so I'm sorry in advance. If you turned on hints, something i personally don't like and turn off with every phone, would that read the written siri commands? Not sure how i think this would help but pre-coffee. :) Have a good one.

I’ve been experiencing the opposite, speech recognition seems to be working phenomenally for me, I don’t know if it’s because I have a weird accent I’ve adapted over the years for speech recognition, but it seems to be working great. I usually always pronounced the tea as a tea, tho sticking with a normal American accent for the rest of the letters. with the release of iOS 16: speech recognition has
improved
for me.

Meow Meow put their finger on it -- consistent, well enunciated dictation enables SIRi to learn and widen accurately interpreted speech. I dictated for many years as an attorney. Later, when SIRI CAME ALONG, I GENERALLY had an easy time after SIRI had a chance to learn my speech. I still have an easy time, provided I speak clearly, except for the occasional glitch, like SIRI hearing "group" but writing "grope". And, believe it or not, I have a slight speech impediment, too! smile

I had to stop and create a account so I can post of my reply. The dictation feature on this phone is terrible hi in like many others I’ve read on here where I want to throw this phone up against the wall or out the window or run it over with a car or something I don’t care if I paid $1200 for this phone or not it’s so aggravating I mean so aggravating you you don’t even want to use the dictation feature you would rather just tap it because you have to go back and correct every single thing about this thing this is the worst the worst dictation feature of ever seen on any iPhone or any phone at all. I can use Google Gboard on here but whenever the dictation comes up it switches you to another page .
I can use Google Gboard on here but whenever the dictation comes up it switches you to another page were you not seeing with your writing and it’s annoying it does not page please I wish Apple would do something about it.

I used Apple dictation to write this and I had to work really hard and go back in correct about a third of what I wrote

I very rarely use dictation. I’m using it now, just to see how it works. I am a fast talker, but when I’m dictating, I speak slowly and clearly. The few times I do use dictation, I haven’t noticed any problems. It seems to understand me and pick up what I say without any issues. Let’s see how this went. I only noticed one issue, where I said I’m and it posted I am.

This was one of the reasons I moved to android several years back and google does seem to be the king of this particular hill, especially on Pixel phones. I mostly use android’s braille screen input these days, I think apple and android are basically at parody there, but if dictation is your main way of typing iPhones have not been the best solution for many years now. I’m not recommending a switch necessarily, you’d lose all that fantastic integration with your MAC, but you’d gain better integration with windows and have much more accurate dictation.
Edit: I was writing in braille and made a very dictation like mistake, saying use instead of lose haha. It's fixed now.

@Holy Diver, I've never used android, so i'm curious, is there any difference between braille screen input on ios and android devices, or is it the same on both?
Regarding dictation, I don't use it myself as I prefer to type, but its not that good on ios yeah, although I think it parcially depends on factors, I.e, where you are when dictating, if there's background noise etc, and how clearly and from what distance you speak from the microphone when doing so, but over all, apple's dictation isn't that good. Not that it's bad, per say, but it could improve a lot for sure.

Folks, to say that I oftentimes rely on the dictation feature on iOS is an understatement, and it never disappoints. Yeah - there are the occasional mistakes and corrections, but I've seen them on Android phones - namely flagship Galaxy ones. There's, of course, always room for improvement, but as a non-native English speaker IMO Apple's dictation facility is quite impressive. I've even utilize Gboard on my iPhone, but the results are quite similar, so Gboard is mostly used for voice-typing in Persian - something which only Google supports albeit via an Internet connection only. A phone like Google Pixel might do better in this field, but iPhones are superior when it comes to battery life, performance, speakers, etc., so I don't want to sacrifice all of these for a potential - and a theoretically fractional - dictation improvement.

They're about the same now really. In my very subjective experience iOS gives a little more flexibility for, say, selecting text in an edit field but android is more stable, focus doesn't jump around as much or accidentally type the wrong letter as often. Of course that might be down to the quality of hardware I'm using, much newer android flagship vs older iPhone 8, so take that with some salt. I've had a few friends who use both on newer hardware say android's is more stable now, though with less features. I think either will do most everyone fine honestly.

I also don't like using Apples dictation software. It seems to make a lot more mistakes than other dictation software I have used. Although I do agree that Windows 8 dictation software used to be even worse than Apple dictation is now, Apple dictation is still not good. I find myself having to constantly stop every few sentences to correct mistakes.

However, I recently installed Microsoft Swift Key Keyboard. It's a keyboard that claims to have the power of generating responses via artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence parts of the keyboard don't appear to be accessible; however, this keyboard also has the functionality of voice dictation. Microsoft calls this feature voice typing. I think it uses the same technology as Microsoft Word does.

Back in the day when I was a student at college, I would use Microsoft Word to dictate my responses to essays etc. Even back in those days, Apple Dictation would have a hard time understanding me, which means I would have to correct mistakes constantly. This was a big frustration because it would take me longer to edit than it would to speak and write something down. Microsoft Dictation made it a lot easier, especially with Microsoft Word, but unfortunately I had to access Dictation through a Microsoft 365 subscription. But now I'm glad that Microsoft has integrated this into the iOS version of Swift Key Keyboard. I can easily use Microsoft's dictation functionality to type in text even while in other text fields that are not in Microsoft's own software. Another cool feature that I like about this dictation software is that I don't have to speak punctuation marks. The software simply knows when to insert punctuation Marks.Overall, the dictation experience has drastically improved with Microsoft Swift Key Keyboard.

This is extremely helpful and possibly a lifesaver for those who need to rely on dictation due to a disability.

Dictation isn't perfect. It generally runs about 94% accurate. Unfortunately, the remaining 6% is very very very important. It determines tone, context.

One thing to always do it to clean microphones regularly. These are open ports. Debris can often get in there. A dry cloth or shirt can usually get most to all of the debris out. It takes 2 minutes and can improve dictation by a lot.