# Patent

## Title
Blind diarization of recorded calls with arbitrary number of speakers

## Abstract

In a method of diarization of audio data, audio data is segmented into a plurality of utterances. Each utterance is represented as an utterance model representative of a plurality of feature vectors. The utterance models are clustered. A plurality of speaker models are constructed from the clustered utterance models. A hidden Markov model is constructed of the plurality of speaker models. A sequence of identified speaker models is decoded.

## Background
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
The present application is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/319,860, filed on Jun. 30, 2014, and claims the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application No. 61/847,359, filed on Jul. 17, 2013. The entire contents of each of these applications is hereby incorporated by reference.


BACKGROUND
The present disclosure is related to the field of automated transcription. More specifically, the present disclosure is related to diarization of audio data with an arbitrary number of speakers.
Speech transcription and speech analytics of audio data may be enhanced by a process of diarization wherein audio data that contains multiple speakers is separated into segments of audio data typically to a single speaker. While speaker separation in diarization facilitates later transcription and/or speech analytics, the identification of or discrimination between identified speakers can further facilitate these processes by enabling the association of context and information in later transcription and speech analytics processes specific to an identified speaker.
Previous diarization solutions for example of a recorded telephone conversation of a customer service application assume two speakers. The two speakers may exemplarily be a customer and an agent. The two-speaker assumption greatly simplifies the blind-diarization task. However, many calls may have a more complex structure. Some calls may feature only a single speaker, exemplarily a recorded message or an IVR message. Other calls may contain additional “speech-like” segments. For example, these segments may include background talks. Still other examples of complex calls include calls with three speakers or more such as conference calls or calls in which one or more speakers are replaced by another speaker.
Therefore, a blind-diarization algorithm that does not assume any prior knowledge on the number of speakers, and performs robustly on calls with arbitrary number of speakers is achieved in embodiments as disclosed herein.
BRIEF DISCLOSURE
An exemplary embodiment of a method of diarization of audio data includes segmenting audio data into a plurality of utterances. Each utterance is represented as an utterance model representative of a plurality of feature vectors of each utterance. The utterance models are clustered. A plurality of speaker models are constructed from the clustered utterance models. A hidden Markov model of the plurality of speaker models is constructed. A sequence of identified speaker models is decoded that best corresponds to the utterances of the audio data.
In an additional exemplary embodiment of a method of diarization of audio data, the audio data is segmented into a plurality of frames. The audio data is segmented into a plurality of utterances. Each utterance of the plurality includes more than one frame of the plurality of frames. Each utterance is represented as an utterance model representative of a plurality of feature vectors of each utterance. The utterance models are projected onto a lower dimensional space to create a plurality of projected utterance models. In the projected utterance models, a distance between utterances is a defined metric. The projected utterance models are clustered. A plurality of speaker models are constructed from the clustered projected utterance models. A hidden Markov model of the plurality of speaker models is constructed. A sequence of identified speaker models that best corresponds to the utterances of the audio data is decoded.
In an additional exemplary embodiment of a method of diarization of audio data, the audio data is received. The audio data is segmented into a plurality of frames. The audio data is segmented into a plurality of utterances. Each utterance of the plurality includes more than one frame of the plurality of frames. At least one acoustic feature is extracted from each of the plurality of frames. Each utterance is represented as an utterance model representative of the extracted acoustic features of the plurality of frames of each utterance. A distribution of the extracted acoustic features of each utterance is approximated by calculating at least one Gaussian mixture model for each utterance. A distance between each of the Gaussian mixture models is calculated. The utterance models are clustered based upon the calculated distances. A plurality of speaker models are constructed from the cluster projected utterance models. A hidden Markov model of the plurality of speaker models is constructed. A sequence of identified speaker models is decoded that best corresponds to the utterances of the audio data.



BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 is a flow chart that depicts an embodiment of a method of transcription using blind diarization.
FIG. 2 is a flow chart that depicts an embodiment of creating and using an acoustic voiceprint model.
FIG. 3 is a system diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a system for diarization of audio data.
FIG. 4 is a flow chart that depicts an exemplary embodiment of a method of blind diarization with an arbitrary number of speakers.
FIG. 5 depicts an exemplary embodiment of a state diagram modeling a conversation between N speakers.
FIG. 6 is a flow chart that depicts an exemplary embodiment of more detailed processes carried out during embodiments of a method of blind diarization with an arbitrary number of speakers.



DETAILED DISCLOSURE
Speech transcription of audio data, which may include streaming or previously recorded audio data, is enhanced by diarization wherein a speaker identity is identified and associated with transcribed speech. A speaker diarization system and method is aimed at identifying the speakers in a given call and associating each transcribed speech segment with an identified speaker. Speaker diarization thus enables the separation of speakers in the transcription of audio data.
Embodiments of a diarization process disclosed herein include a first optional step of a speech-to-text transcription of audio data to be diarized. Next, a “blind” diarization of the audio data is performed. The audio data is exemplarily a .WAV file, but may also be other types of audio data in a pulse code modulated (PCM) format or linear pulse code modulated (LPCM) format. Furthermore, the audio data is exemplarily a mono audio file; however, it is recognized that embodiments of the systems and methods as disclosed herein may also be used with stereo audio data. The blind diarization receives the audio file and optionally the automatically generated transcript. This diarization is characterized as “blind” as the diarization is performed prior to an identification of the speakers. In an exemplary embodiment of a customer service call, the “blind diarization” play only cluster the audio data into speakers while it may still be undetermined which speaker is the agent and which speaker is the customer.
The blind diarization is followed by a speaker diarization wherein a voiceprint model that represents the speech and/or information content of an identified speaker in the audio data is compared to the identified speech segments associated with the separated speakers. Through this comparison, one speaker can be selected as the known speaker, while the other speaker is identified as the other speaker. In an exemplary embodiment of customer service interactions, the customer agent will have a voiceprint model as disclosed herein which is used to identify one of the separated speaker as the agent while the other speaker is the customer.
The identification of segments in an audio file, such as an audio stream or recording (e.g. a telephone call that contains speech) can facilitate increased accuracy in transcription, diarization, speaker adaption, and/or speech analytics of the audio file. An initial transcription, exemplarily from a fast speech-to-text engine, can be used to more accurately identify speech segments in an audio file, such as an audio stream or recording, resulting in more accurate diarization and/or speech adaptation.
FIGS. 1 and 2 are flow charts that respectively depict exemplary embodiments of method 100 of transcription using blind diarization and a method 200 of creating and using an acoustic voiceprint model. FIG. 4 depicts an exemplary embodiment of a method 400 of blind diarization with an arbitrary number of speakers. FIG. 5 depicts an exemplary embodiment of more detailed method 500 as may be incorporated into an embodiment of a method of blind diarization. FIG. 3 is a system diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a system 300 which may carry out and implement any methods 10, 200, 400, and 500 as described in further detail herein. The system 300 is generally a computing system that includes a processing system 306, storage system 304, software 302, communication interface 308 and a user interface 310. The processing system 306 loads and executes software 302 from the storage system 304, including a software module 330. When executed by the computing system 300, software module 330 directs the processing system 306 to operate as described in herein in further detail in accordance with the methods 400 and 500, and in additional embodiments, methods 100 and 200.
Although the computing system 300 as depicted in FIG. 3 includes one software module in the present example, it should be understood that one or more modules could provide the same operation. Similarly, while the description as provided herein refers to a computing system 300 and a processing system 306, it is to be recognized that implementations of such systems can be performed using one or more processors, which may be communicatively connected, and such implementations are considered to be within the scope of the description.
The processing system 306 can comprise a microprocessor and other circuitry that retrieves and executes software 302 from storage system 304. Processing system 306 can be implemented within a single processing device but can also be distributed across multiple processing devices or sub-systems that cooperate in executing program instructions. Examples of processing system 306 include general purpose central processing units, application specific processors, and logic devices, as well as any other type of processing device, combinations of processing devices, or variations thereof.
The storage system 304 can comprise any storage media readable by processing system 306, and capable of storing software 302. The storage system 304 can include volatile and non-volatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information, such as computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data. Storage system 304 can be implemented as a single storage device but may also be implemented across multiple storage devices or sub-systems. Storage system 304 can further include additional elements, such as a controller capable of communicating with the processing system 306.
Examples of storage media include random access memory, read only memory, magnetic discs, optical discs, flash memory, virtual memory and non-virtual memory, magnetic sets, magnetic tape, magnetic disc storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to store the desired information and that may be accessed by an instruction execution system, as well as any combination or variation thereof, or any other type of storage medium. In sonic implementations, the storage media can be a non-transitory storage media. In some implementations, at least a portion of the storage media may be transitory.
User interface 310 can include a mouse, a keyboard, a voice input device, a touch input device for receiving a gesture from a user, a motion input device for detecting non-touch gestures and other motions by a user, and other comparable input devices and associated processing elements capable of receiving user input from a user. Output devices such as a video display or graphical display can display an interface further associated with embodiments of the system and method as disclosed herein. Speakers, printers, haptic devices and other types of output devices may also be included in the user interface 310.
As described in further detail herein, the computing system 300 receives and transmits data through the communication interface 308. In embodiments, the communication interface 308 operates to send and/or receive data to/from other devices to which the computing system 300 is communicatively connected. In the computing 300, audio data 320 is received at the communication interface 308. The audio data 320 may be an audio recording or a conversation, which may exemplarily be between an unknown number of speakers, although the audio recording may be any of a variety of other audio records, including two speakers, multiple speakers, a single speaker, or an automated or recorded auditory message. In still further embodiments, the audio data may be streaming audio data received in real time or near-real time by the computing system 300. In a further exemplary embodiment, the audio data may exemplarily be a .WAV file, but may also be other types of audio or video files, for example, pulse code modulated (PCM) formatted audio, and more specifically, linear pulse code modulated (LPCM) audio files. Furthermore, the audio data is exemplarily a mono audio file; however, it is recognized that embodiments of the method disclosed herein may also be used with stereo audio tiles. One feature of the methods disclosed herein are that speaker separation and diarization can be achieved in mono audio files where stereo speaker separation techniques are not available.
In still further embodiments, the audio data 320 is received, at the computing system 300 at the communication interface 308. The processing system 306 further obtaining at least one acoustic model, which may be further received at the communication interface 308, or may be stored at the storage system 304. The processing system 306, upon execution of the application module 330 diarizes the audio data in the manner as described in further detail herein. In exemplary embodiments, the diarized audio data may be output from the communication interface 308 to another computing device. In other embodiments, the processing system 206 further operates to transcribe the diarized audio data in order to produce a diarized transcript 350. The diarized transcript 350 may be transmitted from the computing system 300 via the communication interface 308 to another computing device or may be exemplarily presented to a user at the user interface 310, which may exemplarily be a graphical display.
FIG. 1 is a flow chart that depicts an exemplary embodiment of a method 100 of diarization of audio data. The method 100 beings at the acquisition of audio data 102. As described above, the audio data acquired at 102 may exemplarily be real-time or streaming audio data of may be previously acquired and stored audio data.
In embodiments, the audio data 102 further comprises or is associated to metadata 108. The metadata 108 can exemplarily include an identification number for one or more of the speakers in the audio data 102. In alternative embodiments, the metadata 108 may provide information regarding context or content of the audio data 102, including a topic, time, date, location etc. In the context of a customer service call center, the metadata 108 provides a customer service agent identification.
In an embodiment, the audio data 102 and the metadata 108 are provided to a speech-to-text (STT) server 104, which may employ any of a variety of method of techniques for automatic speech recognition (ASR) to create an automated speech-to-text transcription 106 from the audio file. The transcription performed by the STT server at 104 can exemplarily be a large-vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) and the audio data 102 provided to the STT server 104 can alternatively be a previously recorded audio file or can be streaming audio data obtained from an ongoing communication between two speakers. In an exemplary embodiment, the STT server 104 may use the received metadata 108 to select one or more models or techniques for producing the automated transcription cased upon the metadata 108. In a non-limiting example, an identification of one of the speakers in the audio data can be used to select a topical linguistic model based upon a content area associated with the speaker. In addition to the transcription 106 from the STT server 104, STT server 104 may also output time stamps associated with particular transcription segments, words, or phrases, and may also include a confidence score in the automated transcription. The transcription 106 may also identify homogeneous speaker speech segments. Homogenous speech segments are those segments of the transcription that have a high likelihood of originating from a single speaker. The speech segments may exemplarily be phonemes, words, or sentences.
After the transcription 106 is created, both the audio data 102 and the transcription 106 are used for a blind diarization at 110. However, it is to be recognized that in alternative embodiments, the blind diarization may be performed without the transcription 106 and may be applied directly to the audio data 102. In such embodiments, the features at 104 and 106 as described above may not be used. The diarization is characterized as blind as the identities of the speakers (e.g. agent, customer) are not known at this stage and therefore the diarization 110 merely discriminates between a first speaker (speaker 1) and a second speaker (speaker 2), or more. Additionally, in some embodiments, those segments for which a speaker cannot be reliably determined may be labeled as being of an unknown speaker.
An embodiment of the blind diarization at 110 receives the mono audio data 102 and the transcription 106 and begins with the assumption that there are two main speakers in the audio file. The blind diarization separates the audio data into frames as disclosed in further detail herein and separates the audio data into flames for diarization using two techniques. The first techniques uses energy envelopes in the audio file, or other audio analysis techniques as disclosed herein to identify segments attributable to separate speakers. The blind diarization process then filters out non-speech frames. In an exemplary embodiment, this may be performed by removing a frame if the dynamic energy range in the frame is below a predetermined threshold. Alternatively, or an addition, frames may be removed if the high frequency energy in the frame falls outside of a predetermined pass band for high frequency energy in a frame.
After the audio file has been segmented based upon the energy envelope analysis, homogeneous speaker segments from 106 are identified in the audio file. Then, long homogeneous speaker segments can be split into sub-segments if long silent intervals are found within a single segment. The sub-segments are selected to avoid splitting the long speaker segments within a word. The transcription information in the information file 106 can provide context to where individual words start and end. After the audio file has been segmented based upon both the audio file 102 and the information file 106, the identified segments are clustered into speakers (e.g. speaker 1, speaker 2, speaker N).
In an embodiment, the blind diarization uses voice activity detection (VAD) to segment the audio data 102 into utterances or short segments of audio data with a likelihood of emanating from a single speaker. In an embodiment, the VAD segments the audio data into utterances by identifying segments of speech separated by segments of non-speech on a frame-by-frame basis. Context provided by the transcription 106 can improve the distinction between speech and not speech segments. In the VAD, an audio frame may be identified as speech or non-speech based upon a plurality of characteristics or probabilities exemplarily based upon mean energy, band energy, peakiness, or residual energy; however, it will be recognized that alternative characteristics or probabilities may be used in alternative embodiments.
Embodiments of the blind diarization 110 may further leverage the received metadata 108 to select an acoustic voiceprint model 116, from a plurality of stored acoustic voiceprint models as well be described in further detail herein. Embodiments that use the acoustic voiceprint model in the blind diarization 110 can improve the clustering of the segmented audio data into speakers, for example by helping to cluster segments that are otherwise indeterminate, or “unknown.”
The blind diarization at 110 results in audio data of separated speakers at 112. In an example, the homogeneous speaker segments in the audio data are tagged as being associated with a first speaker or a second speaker. As mentioned above, in some embodiments, in determinate segments may be tagged as “unknown” and audio data may have more than two speakers tagged.
At 114 a second diarization, “speaker” diarization, is undertaken to identify the tagged speakers. In a customer service context, this may include the identification of which speaker is the customer service agent.
A variety of techniques may be used to identify the agent, including acoustical matching techniques of speech transcription and text analysis techniques. In an embodiment, an agent model, which can be derived in a variety of manners or techniques, may be compared to the homogeneous speaker in the audio tile segments assigned to speaker 1 and then compared to the homogeneous speaker segments in the audio file assigned to speaker 2 to determine which combination of homogenous speaker segments has a greater likelihood of matching the agent model. The homogeneous speaker segments tagged in the audio file as being the speaker that is most likely the agent based upon the comparison of the agent model are tagged as the agent and the homogeneous speaker segments tagged in the audio file as being the other speaker are tagged as the customer.
A transcript resulting from automatic speech-to-text transcription provides information on speech segments such as phonemes, words, or sentences. These speech segments can then be clustered into groups of speech segments that have a high likelihood of emanating from the same speaker. These clustered segments can be used to discriminate between speakers in the diarization process. The identification and use of identifiable speech segments as the input for the diarization can further facilitate filtering out noise and other non-speech segments that can interfere with the diarization process. In another embodiment, features or characteristics of the audio files of clustered as each of the speakers are compared to speech models of known agents, customers, or other speakers. From this comparison, one or both of the speakers may be identified.
In a still further exemplary embodiment of a customer service interaction, the metadata 108 identifies a customer service agent participating in the recorded conversation and the other speaker is identified as the customer. An acoustic voiceprint model 116, which can be derived in a variety of manners or techniques as described in more detail herein, is compared to the homogeneous speaker audio data segments assigned to the first speaker and then compared to the homogeneous speaker audio data segments assigned to the second speaker to determine which separated speaker audio data segments have a greater likelihood of matching the acoustic voiceprint model 116. At 118, the homogeneous speaker segments tagged in the audio file as being the speaker that is most likely the agent based upon the comparison of the acoustic voiceprint model 116 are tagged as the speaker identified in the metadata and the other homogeneous speaker segments are tagged as being the other speaker.
At 120, the diarized and labeled audio data from 118 again undergoes an automated transcription, exemplarily performed by a STT server or other form of ASR, which exemplarily may be LVCSR. With the additional context of both enhanced identification of speaker segments and clustering and labeling of the speaker in the audio data, an automated transcription 122 can be output from the transcription at 120 through the application of improved algorithms and selection of further linguistic or acoustic models tailored to either the identified agent or the customer, or another aspect of the customer service interaction as identified through the identification of one or more of the speakers in the audio data. This improved labeling of the speaker in the audio data and the resulting transcription 122 can also facilitate analytics of the spoken content of the audio data by providing additional context regarding the speaker, as well as improved transcription of the audio data.
It is to be noted that in some embodiments, the acoustic voice prints as described herein may be used in con unction with one or more linguistic models, exemplarily the linguistic models as disclosed and applied in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/084,976, which is incorporated herein by reference. In such combined embodiments, the speaker diarization may be performed in parallel with both a linguistic model and an acoustic voice print model and the two resulting speaker diarization are combined or analyzed in combination in order to provide an improved separation of the audio data into known speakers. In an exemplary embodiment, if both models agree on a speaker label, then that label is used, while if the analysis disagrees, then an evaluation may be made to determine which model is the more reliable or more likely model based upon the context of the audio data. Such an exemplary embodiment may offer the advantages of both acoustic and linguistic modeling and speaker separation techniques.
In a still further embodiment, the combination of both an acoustic voiceprint model and a linguistic model can help to identify errors in the blind diarization or the speaker separation phases, exemplarily by highlighting the portions of the audio data above within which the two models disagree and providing for more detailed analysis on those areas in which the models are in disagreement in order to arrive at the correct diarization and speaker labeling. Similarly, the use of an additional linguistic model may provide a backup for an instance wherein an acoustic voiceprint is not available or identified based upon the received metadata. For example, this situation may arrive when there is insufficient audio data regarding a speaker to create an acoustic voiceprint as described in further detail herein.
Alternatively, in embodiments, even if the metadata does not identify a speaker, if an acoustic voiceprint exists for a speaker in the audio data, all of the available acoustic voiceprints may be compared to the audio data in order to identify at least one of the speakers in the audio data. In a still further embodiment, a combined implantation using a linguistic model and an acoustic model may help to identify an incongruity between the received metadata, which may identify one speaker, while the comparison to that speaker's acoustic voiceprint model reveals that the identified speaker is not in the audio data. In one non-limiting example, in the context of a customer service interaction, this may help to detect an instance wherein a customer service agent enters the wrong agent ID number so that corrective action may be taken. Finally, in still further embodiments the use of a combination of acoustic and linguistic models may help in the identification and separation of speakers in audio data that contain more than two speakers, exemplarily, one customer service agent and two customers; two agents and one customer; or an agent, a customer, and an automated recording such as a voicemail message.
FIG. 2 is a flow chart that depicts an embodiment of the creation and use of an acoustic voiceprint model exemplarily used as the acoustic voiceprint model 116 in FIG. 1. Referring back to FIG. 2, the method 200 is divided into two portions, exemplarily, the creation of the acoustic voiceprint model at 202 and the application or use of the acoustic voiceprint model at 204 to label speakers in an audio file. In an exemplary embodiment of a customer service interaction, the acoustic voiceprint model is of a customer service agent and associated with an agent identification number specific to the customer service agent.
Referring specifically to the features at 202, at 206 a number (N) of files are selected from a repository of files 208. The files selected at 206 all share a common speaker, exemplarily, the customer service agent for which the model is being created. In an embodiment, in order to make this selection, each of the audio files in the repository 208 are stored with or associated to an agent identification number. In exemplary embodiments, N may be 5 files, 100 files, or 1,000; however, these are merely exemplary numbers. In an embodiment, the N files selected at 20 may be further filtered in order to only select audio files in which the speaker, and thus the identified speaker are easy to differentiate, for example due to the frequency of the voices of the different speakers. By selecting only those files in which the acoustic differences between the speakers are maximized, the acoustic voiceprint model as disclosed herein may be started with files that are likely to be accurate in the speaker separation. In one embodiment, the top 50% of the selected files are used to create the acoustic voiceprint, while in other embodiments, the top 20% or top 10% are used; however, these percentages are in no way intended to be limiting on the thresholds that may be used in embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure.
In a still further embodiment, a diarization or transcription of the audio file is received and scored and only the highest scoring audio files are used to create the acoustic voiceprint model. In an embodiment, the score may exemplarily be an automatedly calculated confidence score for the diarization or transcription. Such automated confidence may exemplarily, but not limited to, use an auto correction function.
Each of the files selected at 206 are processed through a diarization at 210. The diarization process may be such as is exemplarily disclosed above with respect to FIG. 1. In an embodiment, the diarization at 210 takes each of the selected audio files and separates the file into a plurality of segments of speech separated by non-speech. In an embodiment, the plurality of speech segments are further divided such that each segment has a high likelihood of containing speech sections from a single speaker. Similar to the blind diarization described above, the diarization at 210 can divide the audio file into segments labeled as a first speaker and a second speaker (or in some embodiments more speakers) at 212.
At 214 the previously identified speaker segments from the plurality of selected audio files are clustered into segments that are similar to one another. The clustering process can be done directly by matching segments based upon similarity to one another or by clustering the speaker segments based upon similarities to a group of segments. The clustered speaker segments are classified at 216. Embodiments of the system and method use one or more metrics to determine which clusters of speaker segments belong to the customer service agent and which speaker segment clusters belong to the customers with whom the customer service agent was speaking. In one non-limiting embodiment, the metric of cluster size may be used to identify the segment clusters associated with the customer service agent as larger clusters may belong to the customer service agent because the customer service agent is a party in each of the audio files selected for use in creating a model at 206. While it will be recognized that other features related to the agent's script, delivery, other factors related to the customer service calls themselves may be used as the classifying metric.
At 218 an acoustic voiceprint model for the identified speaker, exemplarily a customer service agent is built using the segments that have been classified as being from the identified speaker. At 220 a background voiceprint model that is representative of the audio produced from speakers who are not the identified speaker is built from those speech segments identified to not be the identified speaker, and thus may include the other speakers as well as background noise.
Therefore, in some embodiments, the acoustic voiceprint model, such as exemplarily used with respect to FIG. 1 described above, includes both an identified speaker voiceprint 222 that is representative of the speech of the identified speaker and a background voiceprint 224 that is representative of the other speaker with whom the identified speaker speaks, and any background noises to the audio data of the identified speaker.
It will be recognized that in embodiments, the creation of the acoustic voiceprint model 202 may be performed in embodiments to create an acoustic voiceprint model for each of a plurality of identified speakers that will be recorded and analyzed in the diarization method of FIG. 1. Exemplarily in these embodiments, the identified speakers may be a plurality of customer service agents. In some embodiments, each of the created acoustic voiceprint models are stored in a database of acoustic voiceprint models from which specific models are accessed as described above with respect to FIG. 1, exemplarily based upon an identification number in metadata associated with audio data.
In further embodiments, the processes at 202 may be performed at regular intervals using a predefined number of recently obtained audio data, or a stored set of exemplary audio tiles. Such exemplary audio files may be identified from situations in which the identified speaker is particularly easy to pick out in the audio, perhaps due to differences in the pitch or tone between the identified speaker's voice and the other speaker's voice, or due to a distinctive speech pattern or characteristic or prevalent accent by the other speaker. In still other embodiments, the acoustic voiceprint model is built on an ad hoc basis at the time of diarization of the audio. In such an example, the acoustic model creation process may simply select a predetermined number of the most recent audio recordings that include the identified speaker or may include all audio recordings within a predefined date that include the identified speaker. It will be also noted that once the audio file currently being processed has been diarized, that audio recording may be added to the repository of audio files 208 for training of future models of the speech of the identified speaker.
204 represents an embodiment of the use of the acoustic voiceprint model as created at 202 in performing a speaker diarization, such as represented at 114 in FIG. 1. Referring back to FIG. 2, at 226 new audio data is received. The new audio data received at 226 may be a stream of real-time audio data or may be recorded audio data being processed. Similar to that described above with respect to 110 and 112 in FIG. 1, the new audio data 226 undergoes diarization at 228 to separate the new audio data 226 into segments that can be confidently tagged as being the speech of a single speaker, exemplarily a first speaker and a second speaker. At 230 the selected acoustic voiceprint 222 which may include background voiceprint 224, is compared to the segments identified in the diarization at 228. In one embodiment, each of the identified segments is separately compared to both the acoustic voiceprint 222 and to the background voiceprint 224 and an aggregation of the similarities of the first speaker segments and the second speaker segments to each of the models is compared in order to determine which of the speakers in the diarized audio file is the identified speaker.
In some embodiments, the acoustic voiceprint model is created from a collection of audio files that are selected to provide a sufficient amount of audio data that can be confidently tagged to belong only to the agent, and these selected audio files are used to create the agent acoustic model. Some considerations that may go into such a selection may be identified files with good speaker separation and sufficient length to provide data to the model and confirm speaker separation. In some embodiments, the audio files are preprocessed to eliminate non-speech data from the audio file that may affect the background model. Such elimination of non-speech data can be performed by filtering or concatenation.
In an embodiment, the speakers in an audio file can be represented by a feature vector and the feature vectors can be aggregated into clusters. Such aggregation of the feature vectors may help to identify the customer service agent from the background speech as the feature vector associated with the agent will aggregate into clusters more quickly than those feature vectors representing a number of different customers. In a still further embodiment, an iterative process may be employed whereby a first acoustic voiceprint model is created using some of the techniques disclosed above, the acoustic voiceprint model is tested or verified, and if the model is not deemed to be broad enough or be based upon enough speaker segments, additional audio files and speaker segments can be selected from the repository and the model is recreated.
In one non-limiting example, the speaker in an audio file is represented by a feature vector. An initial super-segment labeling is performed using agglomerative clustering of feature vectors. The feature vectors from the agent will aggregate into clusters more quickly than the feature vectors from the second speaker as the second speaker in each of the audio files is likely to be a different person. A first acoustic voiceprint model is built from the feature vectors found in the largest clusters and the background model is built from all of the other feature vectors. In one embodiment, a diagonal Gaussian can be trained for each large cluster from the super-segments in that cluster. However, other embodiments may use Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) while still further embodiments may include i-vectors. The Gaussians are then merged where a weighting value of each Gaussian is proportionate to the number of super-segments in the cluster represented by the Gaussian. The background model can be comprised of a single diagonal Gaussian trained on the values of the super segments that are remaining.
Next, the acoustic voiceprint model can be refined by calculating a log-likelihood of each audio file's super-segments with both the acoustic voiceprint and background models, reassigning the super-segments based upon this comparison. The acoustic voiceprint and background models can be rebuilt from the reassigned super-segments in the manner as described above and the models can be iteratively created in the manner described above until the acoustic voiceprint model can be verified.
The acoustic voiceprint model can be verified when a high enough quality match is found between enough of the sample agent super-segments and the agent model. Once the acoustic voiceprint model has been verified, then the final acoustic voiceprint model can be built with a single full Gaussian over the last super-segment assignments from the application of the acoustic voiceprint model to the selected audio files. As noted above, alternative embodiments may use Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) while still further embodiments may use i-vectors. The background model can be created from the super-segments not assigned to the identified speaker. It will be recognized that in alternative embodiments, an institution, such as a call center, may use a single background model for all agents with the background model being updated in the manner described above at periodic intervals.
Embodiments of the method described above can be performed or implemented in a variety of ways. The SST server, in addition to performing the LVCSR, can also perform the diarization process. Another alternative is to use a centralized server to perform the diarization process. In one embodiment, a stand-alone SST server performs the diarization process locally without any connection to another server for central storage or processing. In an alternative embodiment, the STT server performs the diarization, but relies upon centrally stored or processed models, to perform the initial transcription. In a still further embodiment, a central dedicated diarization server may be used where the output of many STT servers are sent to the centralized diarization server for processing. The centralized diarization server may have locally stored models that build from processing of all of the diarization at a single server.
FIG. 4 is a flow chart that depicts an exemplary embodiment of a method 400 of performing a blind diarization. The method may exemplarily be carried out within the method 100 as described above, or in another application of blind diarization. The method 400 begins with audio data 402. The audio data 402 may be streaming audio captured and processed in real-time or near-real-time, or in other embodiments may be a previously acquired and stored audio file. In an embodiment, the audio data is a mono audio file.
A voice-activity detector (VAD) is used at 404 to identify non-speech segments and the audio file is segmented into utterances that are separated by the identified non-speech segments. In an embodiment, the audio data is segmented into a series of overlapping frames exemplarily 20-25 milliseconds in length; however, this is not intended to be limiting on the scope of the disclosure. In an exemplary embodiment of a speech-processing system, a 20-25 millisecond frame is processed every 10 milliseconds. Such speech frames are long enough to perform meaningful spectral analysis and capture the temporal acoustic characteristics of the speech signal, yet they are short enough to give fine granularity of the output. In an embodiment, the VAD segments the audio data into utterances by identifying segments of the audio data that includes speech from segments of non-speech on a frame-by-frame basis. An audio frame may be identified as speech or non-speech based upon a plurality of characteristics or probabilities exemplarily based upon mean energy, band energy, peakiness, or residual energy; however, it will be recognized that alternative characteristics or probabilities may be used in alternative embodiments. To guarantee the robustness of the following steps, it is possible to ignore very short utterances. Therefore, the set of sufficiently long utterances is denoted as U1, U2, . . . , UK (wherein K is the initial number of utterances). The kth utterance is defined by its start time and its end time Uk=(sk,ek).
Acoustic features are extracted at 406 for the entire conversation x1, x2, . . . , xT (wherein T is the total number of frames). The sequence of feature vectors corresponding to the kth utterance is therefore xsk, . . . xek. Having segmented the input signal into frames, the diarization problem becomes discrete and can be viewed as a Markov process, where the attribution of a frame to a certain speaker (or the classification of the frame as silence or background noise) depends only on the previous frame and the acoustic characteristics of the frame itself. The extraction of acoustic features at 406 provides this information for the diarization process.
While many types of acoustic features may be extracted, in an exemplary embodiment, the acoustic features are perceptive linear predictive analytics (PLP) as described in: Hermansky H. “Perceptual Linear Predictive (PLP) analysis of speech” in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 87(2), pages 1738-1752. B, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety. In an exemplary embodiment as will be described in further detail herein, the extracted acoustic features are Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) for each frame. The MFCC's are used to model acoustic characteristics of the different speakers. The computation of MFCC is exemplary described in further detail in (Mermelstein P. “Distance measures for speech recognition, psychological and instrumental,” in Pattern Recognition and artificial Intelligence, Chen C. H. (Editor), pages 374-388; Academic, New York (1976)) which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Different speakers are then characterized by different multi-dimensional distributions of their MFCC features, exemplarily in a manner as described below.
The MFCC features extracted from each frame are given as a vector of real values of some fixed dimension d. Since the distribution of the feature vectors may be very complex, it is more convenient to approximate it as a combination of simpler distributions. The Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is a commonly used representation for a d-dimensional distribution.
A multivariate normal distribution (a.k.a. Gaussian distribution) of a vector of d random variables, x=(x1, . . . , xd), is characterized by the probability density function:




  
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Where μ=(E(x1), . . . , E(xd)) is the expectancy vector and Σ=(cov(xi,xj))i,j is the covariance matrix. One can obtain the likelihood of a given random vector with respect to a Gaussian distribution by taking the natural logarithm of the probability density function:

L(x)=ln(f(x))=−1⁄2·(ln((2π)d·det(Σ))+(x−μ)T·Σ−1·(x−μ))

In case the random variables are independent (as usually is the case for cepstral coefficients), the covariance matrix becomes diagonal, so the density function can be simplified by using the variance vector σ2=(var(x1), . . . , var(xd)):




  
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A GMM comprises a set of n Gaussians and their probabilities p1, . . . , pn (with Σk=1Kpn=1). The likelihood of a random vector with respect to such a GMM is given by (we denote by a⊕b the operation off addition in the log domain ln(ea+eb)):

G(x)=[ln(p1)+L1(x)]⊕[ln(p2)+L2(x)]⊕ . . . ⊕[ln(pn)+Ln(x)]

In order to represent are the initial utterances U1, U2, . . . , UK, which are not real-valued vectors, and there is no natural distance metric defined on them, using real-valued vectors of a smaller dimension, an approach based on diffusion map embedding has been developed. Diffusion map embedding is generally described by (Coifman R. R., Lafon S. “Diffusion maps”, Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis 21: 5-30 (2006)), which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
A large set of n Gaussians representing these feature vectors of the entire audio data is constructed at 408. A possible way to construct such a set is to use the k-means algorithm on the set of feature vectors. We refer to this set of Gaussians as the universal model.
Next, at 410 for each utterance (Uk) an utterance model is constructed that represents the distribution of the feature vectors in that utterance. In an exemplary embodiment, the utterance model is a GMM (Gk) Each GMM is based on the n Gaussians of the universal model constructed in the previous step, with its mixture probabilities computed using the following formula (for each 1≦i≦n):




  
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Once each utterance is characterized by the vector of mixture probabilities of its GMM, a distance metric between the utterances is defined. This distance can be used to identify between speakers. Conceptually, each speaker has a unique combination of acoustic features reflected in the GMM and the distance metrics between the GMMs highlight these differences. In an embodiment, the distance metric between a pair of utterances (e.g. Uj and Uk) is the Euclidean distance between the probabilities vector of the utterances (Uj and Uk) respective GMMs Gj and Gk:




  
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Next, at 412, a process of embedding is performed in order to aid in the identification and separation of speakers by creating additional mathematical separation between the GMMs of utterances that are less similar. By mathematically separating dissimilar GMMs, the computed Euclidean distance will be greater, drawing sharper contrast between figure clusters. A more detailed embodiment of a process of embedding is described herein in further detail with respect to FIG. 6.
At 414 clustering is used to identify those utterances having similar acoustic features. In one exemplary embodiment, the clustering at 414 is mean-shift clustering, although it is recognized that any clustering method that does not assume a priori knowledge of the number of clusters may be used, including, but not limited to hierarchical clustering. An exemplary embodiment of mean-shift clustering is disclosed by (Cheng Y. “Mean shift, mode seeking, and clustering”, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 17(8): 790-799 (1995)), which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. In an embodiment, the mean-shift clustering algorithm automatically finds the most suitable number of clusters for its input data set. The mean-shift algorithm accepts a set of real-valued vectors of dimension l, denoted y1, y2, . . . , yK ε l, and computes a subdivision into N clusters based on the Euclidean distance between pairs of data vectors, where N is not known in advance. In an embodiment, input data vectors y1, y2, . . . , yK represent the initial utterances U1, U2, . . . , UK and N is the number of speakers in the recorded conversation. The subdivision computed by the mean-shift algorithm defines the initial association of utterances to each of these N speakers. Each of the identified N clusters can be used as a model of each speaker constructed at 416.
Having partitioned the initial utterances into clusters, by maximizing the differences between their acoustic features and mean-shift clustering to form speaker models at 416 a hidden Markov model (HMM) of the clustered speakers is created at 418. FIG. 5 is an exemplary embodiment of a state diagram modeling a conversation between N speakers in the form of a HMM. The HMM includes states labeled S1, S2 . . . SN represent the speakers, and are each associated with cluster of utterances obtained as described above. The HMM state labeled B represents the background and non-speech portions of the conversation. It is possible to associate the background and non-speech portions with a GMM that is computed using the feature vectors extracted from the audio portions that are classified as non-speech as described above.
As continuous speech and non-speech segments are expected, the probabilities associated with the self-loops of the HMM should be very high. Since each utterance is exemplarily 20 milliseconds long, a significant number of utterances associated with the same state (S1, S2, SN, B) will likely occur in a row before a transition is made to another speaking state. In an exemplary embodiment each self-loop is given an initial probability p that is close to one. The probabilities of the other arcs, which represent transitions between states, in an embodiment may initially equal




  
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The initial HMM parameters are updated at 420, exemplarily through the use of Baum-Welch re-estimation. This update may exemplary be performed using the complete sequence of feature vectors x1, x2, . . . , xT. In a non-limiting embodiment, this updating can be performed with one or more iterations of the Baum-Welch algorithm as described in (Baum L. E, Petrie T., Soules G., Weiss N., “A maximization technique occuring in the statistical analysis of probabilistic functions of Markov chains”. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 41(1), 164-171 (1970)), which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The best path corresponding to x1, x2, . . . , xT in the resulting HMM is decoded at 422. In an non-limiting embodiment this may be performed using the Viterbi algorithm as described in Viterbi A. J., “Error bounds for convolutional codes and an asymptotically optimum decoding algorithm”. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 13(2): 260-269 (1967), which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The Viterbi algorithm outputs a best path as a sequence of the speaker states (S1, S2, SN, B) and time lengths at these states that best corresponds to the underlying signal. The identified best path is analyzed to locate sufficiently long sequences of traversals of either S1 or S2, and to create output utterances W1, W2, . . . , WM. An output utterance Wm=sm, em, lm is also given a label lm ε{S1 . . . SN} that corresponds to the best-path sub-sequence that has induced it.
FIG. 6 is a flow chart that depicts an exemplary embodiment of a more detailed process carried out during embodiments of a method of blind diarization with an arbitrary number of speakers, particularly, the method 500 depicted in FIG. 6 depicts an exemplary embodiment of steps that may be carried out in forming the embedding at 412 of the method 400 as found in FIG. 4. The method 500 begins by receiving calculated distances between the utterances 502. In an embodiment, the distances are Euclidean distances between the probability vectors of the utterances of the N Gaussians of the universal model.
At 504, a K×K affinity matrix D is constructed based upon the distance metric given by the following equation in which σ is a parameter:




  
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Next, at 506, a stochastic matrix W is computed form the K×K affinity matrix D. the stochastic matrix W can be computer using the following equation:




  
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Since W is a stochastic matrix, the largest eigenvalue of the matrix equals 1. At 508, the next l largest eigenvalues of the matrix W, denoted λ1, . . . , λl, and their corresponding eigenvectors v1, . . . , vl are computed from the stochastic matrix W.
Finally, at 510 the embedding of the utterances U1, U2, . . . , UK into l-dimensional vectors (y1, y2, . . . , yK ε) is computed. The l-dimensional vectors (y1, y2, . . . , yK ε), of which α is a parameter, are defined as follows:

yk,i=(λi)α·vk,i 

The embedded utterances can then be processed using mean-shift clustering as described above with respect to FIG. 4.
The method as described above is thus capable of recognizing an arbitrary number of speakers in a conversation. This produces a number of distinct advantages. The accuracy of the blind diarization is significantly higher, as the algorithm is not forced to separate the conversation between two speakers. Problematic utterances, such as, but not limited to, background talks or cross-talks, tend to be clustered as a separate speaker (or sometimes several speakers). When transcribed, these segments tend to have low transcription score. Therefore, it is possible to disqualify such low-quality clusters that do not represent true speakers. In embodiments wherein the conversation needs to be fully transcribed, and not just diarized, it is possible to benefit from the accurate diarization and use per-speaker model adaptation, which increases the accuracy of transcription as well.
The diarization results may be used to identify a specific speaker, some of the speakers or all speaker, in embodiments wherein the voice characteristics of these speakers (e.g. their voice characteristics) are known to the system. In embodiments, it is possible to detect an irregular event in the conversation. Such irregular events may include, but are intended to by merely exemplary, call transfers, speaker switches, or joining of an additional speaker to a conference call. In embodiments, diarization results can be further used to derive more accurate statistics out of each conversation such as numbers of speakers, speaker total duration, or a speaker histogram. Certain anomalies can be detected using these statistics, such allowing more accurate analysis of the conversation by an expert system. As non-limiting examples, calls with a single speaker may be discarded or calls with unusual behaviors may be excluded. In embodiments, the diarization process also determines the speakers' change points during a conversation. Such information is highly valuable in analyzing the conversation flow.
The functional block diagrams, operational sequences, and flow diagrams provided in the Figures are representative of exemplary architectures, environments, and methodologies for performing novel aspects of the disclosure. While, for purposes of simplicity of explanation, the methodologies included herein may be in the form of a functional diagram, operational sequence, or flow diagram, and may be described as a series of acts, it is to be understood and appreciated that the methodologies are not limited by the order of acts, as some acts may, in accordance therewith, occur in a different order and/or concurrently with other acts from that shown and described herein. For example, those skilled in the art will understand and appreciate that a methodology can alternatively be represented as a series of interrelated states or events, such as in a state diagram. Moreover, not all acts illustrated in a methodology may be required for a novel implementation.
This written description uses examples to disclose the invention, including the best mode, and also to enable any person skilled in the art to make and use the invention. The patentable scope of the invention is defined by the claims, and may include other examples that occur to those skilled in the art. Such other examples are intended to be within the scope of the claims if they have structural elements that do not differ from the literal language of the claims, or if they include equivalent structural elements with insubstantial differences from the literal languages of the claims.

## Claims

1. A method for automatically transcribing a customer service telephone conversation between an arbitrary number of speakers, the method comprising:
receiving data corresponding to the telephone conversation, wherein the received data comprises audio data and metadata that identifies one or more of the speakers in the audio data;
separating the audio data into frames;
analyzing the frames to identify utterances, wherein each utterance comprises a plurality of frames;
performing blind diarization of the audio data to differentiate speakers, wherein the blind diarization comprises:
representing each utterance as a utterance model based on acoustic features of each utterance,
clustering the utterance models,
creating speaker models from each of the clusters,
constructing a hidden Markov model from the speaker models, and
decoding the hidden Markov model to differentiate speakers of each utterance;

tagging homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation with a tag unique for each speaker;
performing speaker diarization to replace one or more of the tags with a speaker's identity, wherein the speaker diarization comprises:
comparing the homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation to one or more models retrieved from a database wherein the one or more models retrieved correspond to the one or more speakers identified in the metadata, and
based on the comparison, identifying one or more of the speakers; and

transcribing the conversation to obtain a text representation of the conversation, wherein each spoken part of the conversation is labeled with either the speaker's identity or the tag associated with the speaker.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the analyzing the frames to identify utterances comprises using voice activity detection to identify segments of speech separated by segments of non-speech on a frame-by-frame basis.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein a frame is identified as speech or non-speech based on one or more of a frame's mean energy, band energy, peakiness, or residual energy.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the received data comprises an initial transcription of the telephone conversation without any separation or identification of speakers.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the received data comprises metadata that identifies a customer service agent in the telephone conversation.

6. The method according to claim 5, wherein the comparing the homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation to one or more models retrieved from a database:
retrieving an acoustic voice print model for the customer service agent from the database; and
comparing each homogeneous speaker segment in the telephone conversation to the retrieved acoustic voice print model to determine the likelihood that the homogeneous speaker segment was spoken by the customer service agent.

7. The method according to claim 5, wherein the comparing the homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation to one or more models retrieved from a database comprises:
retrieving a linguistic model for the customer service agent from the database;
comparing each homogeneous speaker segment in the telephone conversation to the retrieved linguistic model to determine the likelihood that the homogeneous speaker segment was spoken by the customer service agent.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the acoustic features are vectors comprised of Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the utterance models are Gaussian mixture models.

10. The method according to claim 1, wherein the operation of receiving data corresponding to the telephone conversation comprises:
streaming audio data from a telephone conversation in real time.

11. The method according to claim 1, wherein the operation of receiving data corresponding to the telephone conversation comprises:
receiving audio data from a telephone conversation from a stored file.

12. A non-transitory computer readable medium containing computer readable instructions that when executed by a processor of a computing device cause the computing device to a method comprising:
receiving data corresponding to the telephone conversation, wherein the received data comprises audio data and metadata that identifies one or more of the speakers in the audio data;
separating the audio data into frames;
analyzing the frames to identify utterances, wherein each utterance comprises a plurality of frames;
performing blind diarization of the audio data to differentiate speakers, wherein the blind diarization comprises:
representing each utterance as a utterance model based on acoustic features of each utterance,
clustering the utterance models,
creating speaker models from each of the clusters,
constructing a hidden Markov model from the speaker models, and
decoding the hidden Markov model to differentiate speakers of each utterance;

tagging homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation with a tag unique for each speaker;
performing speaker diarization to replace one or more of the tags with a speaker's identity, wherein the speaker diarization comprises:
comparing the homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation to one or more models retrieved from a database wherein the one or more models retrieved correspond to the one or more speakers identified in the metadata, and
based on the comparison, identifying one or more of the speakers; and

transcribing the conversation to obtain a text representation of the conversation, wherein each spoken part of the conversation is labeled with either the speaker's identity or the tag associated with the speaker.

13. A system for automatically transcribing customer service telephone conversations between customer service agents and customers, the system comprising:
a plurality of call center telephones configured to facilitate telephone conversations between customer service agents and customers;
a database for storing voice print models of customer service agents and customers;
a computing device communicatively coupled to the plurality of call center telephones and the database, the computing device comprising a processor, wherein the processor is configured by software to:
receive data corresponding to the telephone conversation, wherein the received data comprises audio data and metadata that identifies one or more speakers in the audio data;
separate the audio data into frames;
analyze the frames to identify utterances, wherein each utterance comprises a plurality of frames;
perform blind diarization of the audio data to differentiate speakers, wherein the blind diarization comprises:
representing each utterance as a utterance model based on acoustic features of each utterance,
clustering the utterance models,
creating speaker models from each of the clusters,
constructing a hidden Markov model from the speaker models,
decoding the hidden Markov model to differentiate speakers of each utterance, and
tagging homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation with a tag unique for each speaker;

perform speaker diarization to replace one or more of the tags with a speaker's identity, wherein the speaker diarization comprises:
comparing the homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation to one or more models retrieved from a database wherein the one or more models retrieved correspond to the one or more speakers identified in the metadata, and
identify, based on the comparison one or more of the speakers; and

transcribe the conversation to obtain a text representation of the conversation, wherein each spoken part of the conversation is labeled with either the speaker's identity or the tag associated with the speaker.

14. The method according to claim 13, wherein the received data comprises metadata that identifies one of the speakers in the telephone conversation as a particular customer service agent.

15. The method according to claim 14, wherein the processor is further configured to compare the homogeneous speaker segments in the telephone conversation to one or more models retrieved from a database by:
retrieving an acoustic voice print model for the particular customer service agent from the database; and
comparing each homogeneous speaker segment in the telephone conversation to the retrieved acoustic voice print model to determine the likelihood that the homogeneous speaker segment was spoken by the particular customer service agent.

16. The method according to claim 13, wherein the processor is further configured to:
transmit the transcribed conversation to another computer communicatively coupled to the computer and/or to a user interface couple to the computer.