Patent ID: 8612224

Claim:
A method for identifying a plurality of speakers in audio data and for decoding the speech spoken by said speakers; the method comprising: receiving speech; dividing the speech into segments as it is received; processing the received speech segment by segment in the order received to identify the speaker and to decode the speech, processing comprising: performing primary decoding of the segment using an acoustic model and a language model; obtaining segment parameters indicating the differences between the speaker of the segment and a base speaker during the primary decoding, comprising obtaining the parameters which allow a speaker transform to be estimated, said speaker transform adapting the speech of the speaker of the segment to that of the base speaker of the acoustic model; comparing the segment parameters with a plurality of stored speaker profiles to determine the identity of the speaker, and selecting a speaker profile for said speaker; updating the selected speaker profile using said segment parameters; performing a further decoding of the segment using a speaker independent acoustic model, adapted using the updated speaker profile; outputting the decoded speech for the identified speaker, wherein the speaker profiles are updated as further segments of speech relating to a speaker profile are processed.