Patent ID: 6526126
Filing Date: 2003-02-25
Classification: G10L,H04M,H04Q

Abstract:
Software for automatically and unambiguously identifying a currently unidentified caller as a particular known person, the software embodied in a computer-readable medium and when executed by a computer operable to:access both stored digital representations of speech and stored ambiguity-resolution criteria identified with a plurality of known persons, the digital representations of speech for the known persons being independent of account codes for the known persons, the ambiguity-resolution criteria for the known persons being independent of the digital representations of speech for the known persons, the digital representations of speech and stored ambiguity-resolution criteria having been stored in previous sessions; access, in a current session prior to identification of the currently unidentified person, both a digital representation of speech for the caller and an ambiguity-resolution identifier for the caller, the digital representation of speech for the caller being independent of an account code for the caller, the ambiguity-resolution identifier for the caller being independent of the digital representation of speech for the caller, the digital representations of speech and stored ambiguity-resolution criteria having been received in the current session; perform a first automatic comparison of the digital representation of speech for the still currently unidentified caller with at least some of the stored digital representations of speech for the known persons; identify the caller as at least one of the known persons; and if the caller is ambiguously identified as more than one of the known persons as a result of the first automatic comparison, perform a second automatic comparison of the ambiguity-resolution identifier for the caller that was received in the current session prior to identification of the caller with at least one selected ambiguity-resolution criterion for a known person that was stored in a previous session to unambiguously identify the caller as a particular one of the known persons, the second automatic comparison being performed independent of human interaction between the first and second automatic comparisons; the ambiguity-resolution criterion for the selected known person comprising a store identifier.