Like most children I think my mom walks on water. She’s beautiful and kind and makes really excellent cookies. So like any good son I sent her roses today for her birthday. And she called to thank me, because she is always very polite. Everything was just peachy.
Except that I didn’t catch her call. And then Google Voice, which I have recently adopted, took her voicemail and auto-transcribed it. And then things just got creepy.
Her message, as translated by Google Voice:
Hi Mike, It’s Mom Mom, I got three dozen roses, I can’t believe it. Gosh I’m gonna have to get up on you or something. You need to save your money for your house but they’re beautiful 3 dozen. I can’t quite 31, half a dozen within funny. Thank you so much. I’m not gonna. I’m not going to be able. I’m on my next birthday because you can’t afford it, so I’ll talk to you soon. I love you, thank you bye.
I listened to the actual voicemail and, thankfully, my mother did not actually say “Gosh I’m gonna have to get up on you or something” to thank me for the flowers. What she really said? “I’m going to have to give up on you or something,” referring to me wasting money on flowers.
I love you mom. But Google, this is just wrong. I’m probably going to need therapy now.
That Zero Wing translation technology is awesome.
Google proves itself as a good telecommunications service by providing several features at lower costs through Google Voice, but it is really sad to note when there are variations in transcriptions. Hope Google will soon resolve it.
Mike, next time you want to use photos of me please ask.
Look, a talking rose.
@Andrew
Comment (reply) of the week.
hahah.. cant stop laughing.. good one guys.. all.
Took me a while to make out the fun part.. definitely comment of the week :D Awezome!
Oh my. I’ve had some interesting translations, but they’ve been from my wife. I think that would creep me out for a few weeks.
Mike, That is the funniest post I’ve seen in years. I owe you a cuban cigar. And that’s no phallic symbol or anything.
Mike, you’ve gotta start posting your transcriptions here: http://googlemu....wordpress.com/
Dude, that photo is sooo disturbing..
hahaha totaly agree
hahaha totally agree
second that
Paul Carr is more disturbing.
Oh you should call & speak a nursery rhyme, major Google Fail! Here is Humpty Dumpty,
” You don’t see you sent over well and you don’t see you had a great so leaking source of entertainment. Couldn’t Bukowski back together again.”
WTH? Fun.. though & I bet it will be different for each caller.
3 dozen roses and your mom thinks you cant pay the mortgage? I thought TC was doing better than that.
“I can’t quite 31, half a dozen within funny.”
I nearly fell out of the chair.
Happy Birthday Mama Arrington!
Mike, That was hysterical. Tears rolling down. Even Google cant get the auto-transcribed Perfected.
You didn’t need therapy before this?
Google should just buy out YouMail and integrate it. My voice mail greeting greets callers by name and creeps out at least a couple of friends a week.
What do you mean? Google Voice already allows you to
do that.
Google voice must’ve just missed out on the never part, “never gonna give you up” – sounds like she ric rolled you.
…hilarious!
I’m still laughing.
Hahahaha. This made my night Mike. I’m glad you’re able to share stuff like this with us because it makes the site more enjoyable.
LOL… Now that’s funny right there, but the post pic, that creeps me out. Ha! Have a great one!
here is what i got from my frustated friend…
Hi sometime. I’ve been trying to reach you this morning and I don’t know why you’re not picking up my phone. I don’t want you to answer would be and reply me back as soon as possible. It is very out of June. I need you to read this message and respond to me 8 A. S. A. P This is really important that you contact me at to Europe, but here. I’ve been trying to reach you all day to day and you didn’t pick up the phone. I am not sure what’s going on. Please plane. I know you’re listening to the message. I know you’re listening to my message, So please call me back and they didn’t call you a call. I’m not going to call you back again. Bye. Okay bye.
What kind of photo is that. bare chest with a red rose. :)
I find it more disturbing you call your mother Mom Mom.
Love your mother, but don’t “love” your mother:
http://www.hulu...rlover-censored
yeah, she didn’t say “mom mom,” she said “your mom”
maybe they can auto post the transcribed vm to fml also..
I showed this post to your mom….and she said “That’s not what I said” (but we have shared a bottle of wine, so who knows. )
:-}
dad
enjoy! Tell Mom Happy Birthday!
I’ve too experienced similar horrifying transcriptions of voicemail in Google Voice.
Particularly bad when the voicemail was from the insurance company after a bad accident and the transcription got ever single number completely wrong. Case #s, phone #s. Completely utterly useless.
I think screenshots of google voice transcription fails will make a good meme…
http://google.mustbedrunk.com
or follow @mustbedrunk
Google Voice transcription is the worst, let’s hope they replace the STT engine soon or this too will be marked Beta for the next decade.
I’m not your Mom :), but my birthday was this week, and I got a weird happy birthday text — I couldn’t tell who it was from, and I wondered if it was from a stalker.
Then I searched the net and discovered the from number was the number that Google voice uses to send SMS messages. I logged into my account and found out that one of my in-laws had texted a message to my google voice number.
I actually really enjoy just how badly Google Voice transcribes some (most) voicemail messages I get.
oh yeah. other than this one, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. If they ever fix it I hope they have an option to keep the old version.
Plan of action: Click the check mark [to indicate the transcription was useful] when they’ve got it mostly wrong. Click the x-mark [to say it was not helpful] whenever they transcribe it mostly accurately.
Just be glad that you didn’t replay the transcript back on text to speech player. Imagine hearing Steven Hacking saying “I’m to have to get up on you”…
Love the pic that you matched to the story.. haha ^^
I turned the transcription off as soon as I started using it. It’s not very good and Google Voice is still very useful without it.
So you took the Google bribe for a service that still needs a lot of work? How shocking.
Mike,
Your mom leaves voicemail? I thought you ranted about that years ago. Does she shake hands too?
I am curious to find out more about your money troubles with your house…I’m googling into it next
… and it’s not even weekend. 4 stars, not for the post, but for the reason. Happy Birthday Michael’s mom!
My Google Voice confidence is low after I was accidentally connected to another call. In this case they were discussing a court case, just assume when using GV that someone is listening in (beside the goverment)
I would’ve worried she had a stroke
Joking apar, voice transcription is rather a complicated task. All existing solutions are far from ideal. We tested Yap before implementing it to IM+ – it was also rather funny.
No wonder, as real AI is not created as yet. So at the moment only human can understand another human, yet not always, BTW :)
Is TechCrunch on the ropes financially? :) What is with all the references to you being broke? ;)
It looks like you’ve been punk’d again, but by google this time.
mike, happy birthday to your mom but your choice of the photo for this post is horrible. by the way i noticed you dad uses the same emoticons like i do :-}
Funny
Silly Google, thinking they had tested that service thoroughly enough. I really don’t think it’s a service that will work well with the majority of calls because of poor line quality (on the caller’s end such as background noise) and the fact most people don’t talk clearly, or have strong accents, or talk faster than others, etc.
Why are some of the words paler than others? Are Google at least trying to indicate which words could be wrong?
why do we all believe this could be the work of massive hardware infrastucture with highly advanced complex algorithms…as spinvox revealed, it is just call-centre staff offshore, without english mother-tongue, struggling to make sense of babbling friends/family…
Here’s what Google Voice did to my wife’s voicemail:
http://twitter....atus/3701324888
Mike,
It is a tremendous achievement, I think, that people expect perfect transcriptions. Though, it is pretty obvious impossible thing. Even for the human being!
I don’t think though, it is good point to bash Google on that. Everyone should understand that these transcriptions may have errors.
Mike can speak for himself but I don’t think he was bashing Google Voice, it’s just funny. The transcription I got for my wife’s voicemail (see above) had us laughing quite a bit. In fact it’s led to some great conversations with non-technical people in the office about what Google Voice is and how it can simplify your life.
You should see what it did w/ people calling say “Mazel Tov on [my son's] Bar Mitzvah.” My son and I had more fun reading the Google Voice transcriptions than we did at the Bar Mitzvah. It got the word bar right but pretty much randomized the rest. Take a thirteen year-old, add the word bar and a word it usually translated into meet, and use your imagination. I love the service anyway.
GV is an awesome service, and has become central to my life. But the transcription part is hardly even usable.
Simulscribe/Phonetag isn’t perfect, but miles better. I wish GV would buy them (+ Ditech now), or at least allow me to fwd unanswered calls to them.
(I explain why I love GV, here: http://bit.ly/izlsc)
There *must* be a website somewhere that compiles all the funny xcrips that you just can’t make up.
Or this is a decent idea for a quick ad-based website started in a college dorm.
Seems everyone is trying to out do fb’s TC pwn. Didn’t think Google would jump in. Who next? Microsoft? IBM? HP?
Ah! The was hilarious. My eyes would have popped out of my head if I saw that at first.
lol!
This is hilarious Mike. Thanks for sharing and giving me a lil’ chuckle.