A mobile phone caller leaves a voicemail message while standing on a noisy street corner: "We look forward to the bond this merger will bring our companies," he shouts.
But the transcribed text that lands in the recipient's mailbox says something else: "We look forward to the bomb this murder will bring our countries," it reads.
Is this a far-fetched scenario? Perhaps. But the threat of mistranscribed voice messages is very real, and something that users of the recently announced Google Voice service should consider, warns Gartner analyst John Pescatore. Voice-to-text transcription is a cool feature, but Google Voice subscribers would do well to remember that it's not yet a perfect technology, he explains. Google admits that "huge accuracy problems" still exist, Pescatore writes, and this will surely result in botched and potentially embarrassing messages.
Beyond transcription problems, Pescatore says users are going to have to remember that text messages tend to get saved and passed around a lot more than voice mails. Therefore, they need to be more careful about what they say on the phone. "People tend to say things on voice that they would not type in an email or text message," he warns.
Image: marcopako/Flickr
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