音声認識
Microsoft was involved in speech recognition and speech synthesis research for many years before WSR. In 1993, Microsoft hired Xuedong Huang from Carnegie Mellon University to lead its speech development efforts; the company's research led to the development of the Speech API (SAPI) introduced in 1994. Speech recognition had also been used in previous Microsoft products. Office XP and Office 2003 provided speech recognition capabilities among Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office applications; it also enabled limited speech functionality in Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 2000. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2002 included speech recognition capabilities with the Tablet PC Input Panel, and Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP enabled voice commands for Windows Media Player. However, these all required installation of speech recognition as a separate component; before Windows Vista, Windows did not include integrated or extensive speech recognition. Office 2007 and later versions rely on WSR for speech recognition services.