Google updates Gboard keyboard on Pixel phones with offline speech recognition

Gboard, one of the most popular keyboard apps for mobile devices, has just received an important update that should allow users to dictate emails and texts faster and more reliably. The latest version of Gboard comes with a brand new AI-powered offline dictation system, which means that users to be able to take advantage of its features even when they're not online.

Google started to work on the new AI dictation method about five years ago, but it wasn't an easy job since the technology that could make it happen didn't exist at all.

To prove its achievement, Google said that older Gboard dictation software use three separate components to model audio waveforms, match the sound, and then combine them into the written output, while the latest version integrates all of these into a single action.

For the time being, the new update is only available on Pixel phones in American English, but Google said that it's confident its offline speech recognition system will become widely available in the future.