It all started when people thought Jimi Hendrix was singing about kissing a guy instead of kissing the sky in his most famous song "Purple Haze." People have been mishearing lyrics in popular songs ever since, but modern voice recognition software takes the cake when it comes to lyrical blunders.
Take this infographic, for instance. It features a lyrical showdown between IBM's voice-to-text program Watson, referred to as "the smartest machine on earth," and professional transcriptionists Colby and Schenae. You know that feeling when you're using voice text and you say, "I love you, mom" but it is interpreted as "I mowed the lawn"? The same thing happens when Watson attempts to decipher song lyrics. The results show us that voice recognition software has a long way to go compared to actual human transcription services.
With Taylor Swift's song "I Knew You Were Trouble," Watson interpreted "a few mistakes ago" as "a few mistakes I go" and "you found me. You found me. You found me," as "you've gotten me." It's even worse on the second line of the verse when "I was in your sights. You got me alone" is read as "I was then you say. You got me a loon." Not only is Watson's interpretation nonsensical, it makes me feel bad for poor Taylor! Why is someone trying to woo her by giving her a loon? Did they bring bird feed too? Run, Taylor, run! Meanwhile, professional transcriptionist Schenae nails every line with no errors or missing words. Come on Watson, you've got to do better than this, right?
Later in the infographic, we see Elton John's classic song "Tiny Dancer" interpreted in an interesting way by Watson, and by interesting I mean almost entirely wrong. Schenae once again gets the lyrics exactly right, but IBM Watson really botches it. "Blue-jeaned baby" becomes "Blue gene bear bear yeah," "LA Lady" becomes "Lazy lately yeah," and "Seamstress for the band" becomes "seamstress for the man." Well then. According to Watson, we've got a recently-lazy bear with blue DNA, lots of yeahs for some reason, and something about it sewing for a man. Elton probably wouldn't have had such a hit with "Tiny Dancer" if those had been his lyrics.
The challenge also includes Van Halen's "Runnin' With The Devil" and Brad Paisley's "Ticks." Watson makes 33 errors across the four verses sampled, and entirely drops 29 words! In comparison, the transcriptions have no errors and no dropped words. "The smartest machine in the world" is not looking so smart when it comes to transcription.
The infographic is an amusing read, and you can take a look at it in this article.
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