Speaker Recognition

Speaker recognition is the identification of the person who is speaking by characteristics of their voices (voice biometrics), also called voice recognition.

There is a difference between speaker recognition (recognizing who is speaking) and speech recognition (recognizing what is being said). These two terms are frequently confused, and "voice recognition" can be used for both. In addition, there is a difference between the act of authentication (commonly referred to as speaker verification or speaker authentication) and identification. Finally, there is a difference between speaker recognition (recognizing who is speaking) and speaker diarisation (recognizing when the same speaker is speaking). Recognizing the speaker can simplify the task of translating speech in systems that have been trained on specific person's voices or it can be used to authenticate or verify the identity of a speaker as part of a security process.

Speaker recognition has a history dating back some four decades and uses the acoustic features of speech that have been found to differ between individuals. These acoustic patterns reflect both anatomy (e.g., size and shape of the throat and mouth) and learned behavioral patterns (e.g., voice pitch, speaking style). Speaker verification has earned speaker recognition its classification as a "behavioral biometric".