Here's how your gadgets decipher what you are saying

Locating the nearest café, calling your mom or writing out a text message that you’re dictating while driving – you know how easy it is. Computers can even answer our questions or act as our virtual assistants; even though it’s frustrating when they get things wrong sometimes. ALSO READ: YOU CAN COMMUTE BETWEEN MUMBAI AND PUNE IN JUST 10 MINUTES

It’s called voice recognition and it’s an example of computer learning. And despite the occasional awkward response or failure to understand some accents, this type of technology has made a lot of progress in the last couple of years; just look at recent versions of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Ford’s SYNC infotainment system. ALSO READ: HYPERLOOP IS OFFICIALLY COMING TO INDIA

So, how does our phone, tablet or car decipher the things we say and respond accordingly? And every time you show this to your septuagenarian father, he is super-awed at the ‘magic’. Even many of us don’t know how this actually works.

To get a clearer idea, we contacted Ford Motors to understand this and here’s what they told us: