Voice control is pants

[Pagemakers]

Just what we’re Tesla thinking with this voice control update.

Previously my voice control was fine when making calls and navigation.

Then Tesla introduced many more commands and the system has fallen off a cliff.

The car control feature like set 22 degrees, open glove box seem to work ok but trying to make a call or navigate to fails 99% of the time. It’s absolutely appalling.

Look at the screenshots below. The command was “call Matt Ainsbury”. I tried it about 50 times and it failed every single time. I even tried in an American accent “’carl’ Matt Ainsbury” and that fails too.

Another bug I’ve found is your phone contacts duplicate if the contact is also a favourite.

20.8.2

 

[Adopado]

The command was “call Matt Ainsbury”.

I found that a more reliably understood word is "phone" rather than "call" ... that doesn't help with the names though!

 

[stonecoldrmw]

Calm at Amesbury!

I chuckled but I'm also thinking this is what awaits me.

 

[Jeeves]

Try imitating an American accent. I find it works 95% of the time then.

Still crap though IMO. If a contact has more than one phone number, it seems to offer them as options for you to scroll through an tap. You can’t seem to successfully say Call Matt Ainsbury on the mobile like you can with Siri.

Find your inner Dolly Parton.

 

[MacPaul]

Try imitating an American accent. I find it works 95% of the time then.

Still crap though IMO. If a contact has more than one phone number, it seems to offer them as options for you to scroll through an tap. You can’t seem to successfully say Call Matt Ainsbury on the mobile like you can with Siri.

Find your inner Dolly Parton.

Your friend simply needs to change his name.

 

[gidster99]

I have found using the word "Dial" works best.
And I have also updated my contact names to try and make them unique... So changing David Smith to David Joshua Smith etc. That seems to help.
And not quite sure how this has happened, but to dial my wife (who is obviously my kids In Case of Emergency contact) I have to ask it to "Dial Mummy Ice". Still, at least it works !!!

 

[Adopado]

Try imitating an American accent. I find it works 95% of the time then.

I think you missed where he said " I even tried in an American accent.." It didn't work!

 

[planehazza]

Voice control works well for me. It allows me to do a lot more than the voice control in the BMW before, but it's not as clever.

I'll say "Call Deborah mobile" and it'll find Deborah and prompt if I want to call her mobile or house phone. Both Google and BMW know that "call Deborah mobile" means call Deborah's mobile.

 

[Jeeves]

I think you missed where he said " I even tried in an American accent.." It didn't work!

Doh, sorry.

 

[Pagemakers]

Just tried again after your suggestions to use “phone” or “dial” instead of “call”.

Agreed it works better, in that it will now try to make a call instead of navigating or something but 100% failure on ANY name in my contacts.

It’s absolutely nuts that I say “phone contact A” and it immediately dials contact B without first prompting. So many times I dive to stop the call but I’m too late and the person picks up - maybe somebody I haven’t spoken to in 5 years. Embarrassing madness.

I remember reading something that the new voice recognition is based on neural network learning. Well it’s absolutely dire at the moment. Quite easily the worst voice command system I’ve used in the last 10 years. It’s makes Siri seem like a revolution.

The sad part is 2 months ago, when it could only call or navigate by voice it was a hundred times better.

Progress eh!

 

[Rooster6655]

Just tried again after your suggestions to use “phone” or “dial” instead of “call”.

Agreed it works better, in that it will now try to make a call instead of navigating or something but 100% failure on ANY name in my contacts.

It’s absolutely nuts that I say “phone contact A” and it immediately dials contact B without first prompting. So many times I dive to stop the call but I’m too late and the person picks up - maybe somebody I haven’t spoken to in 5 years. Embarrassing madness.

I remember reading something that the new voice recognition is based on neural network learning. Well it’s absolutely dire at the moment. Quite easily the worst voice command system I’ve used in the last 10 years. It’s makes Siri seem like a revolution.

The sad part is 2 months ago, when it could only call or navigate by voice it was a hundred times better.

Progress eh!

it worked flawlessly for me the first month, since then it is as you describe, after overcoming the call/dial/phone it will not find any contact by name, useless

 

[bhav]

I've seen quite a few videos on YouTube which show just how rubbish the voice control is...

Quite disappointing for me - I've got used to Android Auto and hence Google Assistant voice commands. It works *so* well. Ok it's not perfect, but it's good enough that I would never hesitate to try.

The issue here is it's so bad that surely you would just not bother to use the 'feature' at all?!

 

[Pagemakers]

At the moment you are right.

I say turn on driver seat heater and it will turn on both.

I say turn off seat heaters and it turns off the car heating.

I say call Peter London and it navigates to Heathrow.

I say call Mike Jones and it says I don’t know the command Mute Jams.

It really is that bad but like I said before, prior the being able to control the car, when you could only navigate or call it worked 90% of the time. Now it’s 5%.

How anybody in Tesla could release this even as an ALPHA product is deluded.

Even in my garage on full WiFi signal it’s just as bad.

Ironically yesterday’s update of 20.8.2 said voice commands were improved. They have not improved in the slightest.

 

[Jeeves]

…
The issue here is it's so bad that surely you would just not bother to use the 'feature' at all?!

Spot on.

 

[planehazza]

I let my girlfriend drive it and from the passenger side I pressed the mic button and said "my driver is cold". It adjusted her hvac temp and put on her seat.

I was expecting a terrible VC experience but thus far it has been great. If it suddenly goes bad than we can assume server issues again.

 

[Pagemakers]

I let my girlfriend drive it and from the passenger side I pressed the mic button and said "my driver is cold". It adjusted her hvac temp and put on her seat.

I was expecting a terrible VC experience but thus far it has been great. If it suddenly goes bad than we can assume server issues again.

Works for me too!

So now I’m on a roll...

“Set driver’s seat heating to 2”. Turns on BOTH heathers.

“Set driver seat to 1”. Turns air con to LO.

“My passenger is cold”. Turns on both front seat heaters.

And to finish with “phone Mark Howarth”. Results in the screenshot. (My name’s not Mark either).

 

[planehazza]

Works for me too!

So now I’m on a roll...

“Set driver’s seat heating to 2”. Turns on BOTH heathers.

“Set driver seat to 1”. Turns air con to LO.

“My passenger is cold”. Turns on both front seat heaters.

And to finish with “phone Mark Howarth”. Results in the screenshot. (My name’s not Mark either).

View attachment 525484

That is not voice recognition at fault (except for the Howarth-House bit). This looks like the car not knowing what to do with command which suggests server/connectivity issues again. It's a bit like Google Assistant, but imagine it only works if your phone has an Internet conenction. Offline commands is something Tesla needs to improve I think.

I'm still on 2020.4.1, so perhaps there's new issues with 8.2

 

[AndrewGR]

But the car ‘thinks’ it knows what to do with commands when it is totally wrong. Why does it get it so wrong so often? I’ve had ‘dial XXX’ interpreted as ‘Navigate to YYY’ several times where ‘YYY’ is somewhere improbable in Spain or Nevada. Useless.

 

[Solarman004]

My boys still get a chuckle at the time they asked me to play a certain song. I tried 5 times using voice command and either the wrong song would come up or nothing happened. Out of frustration I said "what a worthless piece of crap" and sure enough, on the screen pops up "Searching for 'What a worthless piece of crap'".
It was difficult to drive because I was laughing so hard.
(For those of you keeping score, nothing was found to match my search.)

 

[menzic]

At least I am not the onply one, I was beginning to think I had a speech impediment.