Last week, heads all over the IVR industry were turning to the news of AT&T’s Watson speech recognition API release.

This advance is exciting because it will enable smartphone application developers to build speech recognition applications, like what we use in Plum’s IVR solutions.

In his article, “AT&T Opens Watson Speech Recognition API to Developers,” Dan Seifert of MobileBurn puts it like this:

Watson, which was announced earlier this year, is the product of years of research and can recognize and convert various speech patterns into text and commands. AT&T says that it owns over 600 patents related to the service, and there are APIs available for seven different types of voice searches: web search, local business search, question and answer, voice mail to text, SMS, U-verse electronic programming guide and dictation.

Similar to an IVR solution, the programming uses speech recognition software to take a user’s verbal commands and execute actions.

The difference between AT&T and Plum’s approach, though, lies in application.

Because we here at Plum focus on creating IVR systems and call flows for companies, in addition to streamlining customer service, many of our speech recognition applications are of the questions and answer variety.

We both create the software and execute the application (creating a custom voice-user interface), therefore our attention needs to be focused on one area.

AT&T, however, is only creating software and letting others run free and apply the tech.

As the company reports, Watson can be used for a wide range of services and it’s up to developers to dream up how they’ll use the programming to interact with their apps.

This means that with any luck we’ll soon see developers using Watson’s speech recognition technology to do things we never even imagined possible.

Looks like Watson will soon be making its home in an app store near you.