Fact · Voice and AI
0.27word error rate for Black speakers
In the study, Microsoft's system had a word error rate of 0.27 for Black speakers and 0.15 for white speakers.
Checked against its source on October 17, 2026
In the source's own words
“the WER for black speakers is 0.27 (SE: 0.004) compared with 0.15 (SE: 0.003) for white speakers”
Racial disparities in automated speech recognition, Allison Koenecke et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, Results.
Open the original (DOI 10.1073/pnas.1915768117)- What it measures
- Word error rate is the share of words that a recognizer gets wrong, measured against a human transcript.
- What it does not show
- A figure from the study's test audio, which was interview speech rather than short commands.