Patent ID: 8065146

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of ascertaining whether a call recipient is an actual person or an answering machine, the method comprising, with a processor: receiving an audible response from a call recipient and processing the audible response with a speech recognizer having a language model to convert the audible response to an output indicative of recognized speech in a textual form; and processing the output indicative of recognized speech in the textual form with a statistical classifier trained on word phrases commonly used by actual persons and on word phrases commonly used by automated systems along with ascertaining non-word features associated with the audible response to provide an output indicative of whether the call recipient is an actual person or an answering machine, wherein said classifier is separate from said language model, said processing being based on a statistical analysis of the output indicative of recognized speech in the textual form along with the non-word features, the statistical analysis examining the content of the output indicative of recognized speech and based on that examination determining whether the output indicative of recognized speech is more statistically consistent with the word phrases commonly used by actual persons or with the word phrases commonly used by automated systems.