AT&T Releases Watson-Powered Speech API

Back in April, AT&T announced that it would be opening up its Watson voice recognition service to developers. The plan was for app developers to make use of the service in several different areas, such as SMS, voicemail to text, and general voice dictation. AT&T has now officially released the API to developers for free, so the various Watson SDKs can now be used in both native and HTML5 apps.

If you recall, Watson has been split into several different categories so the engine provides the best results. Those include Web Search, Business Search, Voicemail to Text, SMS, Question and Answer, TV, and Generic. Watson has been tuned to each of those specific tasks, so developers have the choice of picking out the best option rather than writing in unnecessary functionality.

Even if you're not a developer, you've probably come across Watson being used in automated customer service helplines. There's also an official Translator app for iOS that makes use of the technology, so take a peek if you're morbidly curious. As for developers, you need only head over to developers.att.com to start building apps using the Watson API.