Speaker recognition

Speaker recognition, which can be classified into identification and verification, is the process of automatically recognizing who is speaking on the basis of individual information included in speech waves. This technique makes it possible to use the speaker’s voice to verify their identity and control access to services such as voice dialing, banking by telephone, telephone shopping, database access services, information services, voice mail, security control for confidential information areas, and remote access to computers. AT&T and TI (with Sprint) have started field tests and actual application of speaker recognition technology; Sprint’s Voice Phone Card is already being used by many customers. In this way, speaker recognition technology is expected to create new services that will make our daily lives more convenient. Another important application of speaker recognition technology is for forensic purposes. Figure 1.1 shows the basic structures of speaker identification and verification systems. Speaker identification is the process of determining which registered speaker provides a given utterance. Speaker verification, on the other hand, is the process of accepting or rejecting the identity claim of a speaker. Most applications in which a voice is used as the key to confirm the identity of a speaker are classified as speaker verification. There is also the case called open set identification, in which a reference model for an unknown speaker ma