There Is a Racial Divide in Speech-Recognition Systems, Researchers Say

The study tested five publicly available tools from Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft that anyone can use to build speech recognition services. These tools are not necessarily what Apple uses to build Siri or Amazon uses to build Alexa. But they may share underlying technology and practices with services like Siri and Alexa. Each tool was tested last year, in late May and early June, and they may operate differently now. The study also points out that when the tools were tested, Apple's tool was set up differently from the others and required some additional engineering before it could be tested.