At today's Pixel 6 and 6 Pro announcement, Google detailed that the Tensor chip is enabling quite some incredible camera voodoo. But Tensor is also improving other machine-learning related features, like speech recognition. The chip is supposed to drastically improve the natural language processing for speech-to-text.

Google claims Tensor enables the “most advanced speech recognition” in the industry, with a method that uses half as much power as similar ones and that’s ”incredibly” accurate. It’s also supposed to dynamically reacts to your accent, your syntax, intents, and even isolating your voice in environment noise.

All this taken together, the Pixel 6 is supposed to create super-fast speech recognition that automatically sets punctation for you (something that Google has been experimenting with for a long time), and that doesn’t stop listening just because you tap a different spot in the transcript when you want to insert some more text.

Pixel’s correction model is now also phonetics-based as opposed to the old keystroke-based method that was used for voice-typing out of necessity, making it easier to correct a wrongly spelled “Cathlyn” to “Kathlyn,” or a “catharsis” that was meant to be a “cathedral.” The Pixel 6 speech model also adapts to your preferences and will save that you probably usually mean to say "Kathlyn" with a K.

The Pixel 6 is even smart enough to understand that words like "clear," "delete," or "send" are not supposed to appear inside the text, and instead simply follows the desired command. Again, similar features have been available for a long time, but they haven't felt exactly reliable or fast.

Google has also added emoji support for voice typing, which we've covered earlier. You can say things like "Let's make 'pasta emoji' and 'ice cream emoji' tonight," and the Pixel 6 will know that you mean 🍝and 🍦.

While I’m personally rather skeptical about these improvements, with so many promises having been made in the area before, I’m willing to see how things pan out in real-life, once we have some hands-on time with the new Pixels.

Be sure to check out our Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro hands-on articles to get in on all the details.