Fact · Voice and AI
The 2020 study found that error rates for Black speakers were nearly twice as large as for white speakers in every case.
Checked against its source on October 17, 2026
In the source's own words
“the error rates for black speakers are nearly twice as large in every case”
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
- The study compared five commercial speech recognition systems on matched audio snippets of Black and white speakers.
- What it does not show
- The systems were tested as they stood in the study. Newer versions may behave differently, so the gap is a finding about those systems, not a permanent property.