Patent ID: 7085718

Claim:
A method for speaker-identification, in a method and/or a system for recognizing speech, comprising the steps of: collecting and/or storing spoken enrollment speech (ES) in an initial enrollment and/or training phase from at least one speaker as identification speech data (ISD) from which speaker-identification and/or classification data (SID) are derived for said speaker and/or stored in a speaker data-base (SDB), wherein in an application phase spoken application speech (AS) from at least one current speaker is received and evaluated with respect to speaker-identification and/or classification data (SID) of said speaker data-base (SDB) so as to at least classify said current speaker as being known or unknown, wherein at least a part of received application speech (AS) of a current speaker being classified as an already known speaker is used as additional identification speech data (AISD) so as to increase the amount of identification speech data (ISD) for said speaker and/or the rate and reliability of speaker-identification, wherein parts of said application speech (AS) are used as additional identification speech data (AISD) for a given known speaker which have a comparable low confidence, reliability, or probability to belong to said known speaker, in particular with respect to a given first threshold value (t L ), and wherein low-confidence parts of said application speech (AS) are used as additional identification speech data (AISD) for a given known speaker which are included in, embedded in, and/or surrounded by high-confidence parts of said application speech (AS) having a comparable high confidence, reliability, or probability to belong to said known speaker, in particular above a given second threshold value (t H ) not lower than said first threshold value (t L ).