Voice Recognition Breaking News

LERNOUT & HAUSPIE SPEECH PRODUCTS ANNOUNCES L&H™ SPEECH RECOGNITION ASDK FOR PLAYSTATION®2

Flexible middleware enables easy integration of speech recognition features into games and edutainment titles; Speech recognition increases player interactivity and enhances overall gaming experience

BRIGHTON, UK and IEPER, BELGIUM -- August 2, 2001 -- Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV (OTC: LHSPQ) ('L&H' or 'the Company'), a world leader in speech and language technology, products and services, today announced that its Speech and Language Technologies Division (SLT) has made the L&H™ Speech Recognition ASDK (Application Software Development Kit) for PlayStation®2 generally available. The ASDK allows developers to easily integrate speech recognition features into games and edutainment titles. Employing speech recognition in adventure, role-playing or strategy games increases player interactivity and enhances the overall gaming experience. L&H's ASDK middleware will be showcased for the first time from the 2nd to 3rd of August in Brighton, UK at the annual European PlayStation®2 developer conference, which is organised by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

The L&H™ Speech Recognition ASDK for PlayStation®2 is based on L&H™ ASR1600 V2.0, a phoneme-based, medium vocabulary speech recognition engine. The ASDK is available today in US-English and in Japanese. The ASDK is speaker independent, which allows a player to use a speech-enabled PlayStation®2 game without training or enrolment of the system. Speech recognition in games or edutainment software is ideal not only for command and control functions, but also allows the player to perform complex game functions by simply speaking with the game's virtual characters, or 'avatars'. This more natural interface between the player and the game gives the user a feeling of complete immersion during game play.

L&H has been holding training courses to acquaint PlayStation®2 games developers with the L&H™ Speech Recognition ASDK and its benefits. Two such training courses, one basic and the other advanced, were held in July of this year at L&H's training centre in Japan. For more information on the training courses in Japan, please visit L&H's Japanese website at www.lhsl.co.jp

Robert Bury, L&H's director of product management, said: "We are pleased with the opportunity to participate in Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's annual PlayStation®2 developer conference. Our Speech Recognition ASDK gives developers the opportunity to create the ideal interface mechanism for games: the player's own voice. L&H's speech and language technologies can be easily integrated into game and education software, offering users a realistic and highly interactive experience."

More information about L&H™ Speech Recognition ASDK for PlayStation®2 can be found at the L&H web site www.lhsl.com/games/.

About Lernout & Hauspie

L&H is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for vertical markets, computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down language barriers. The company provides a wide range of offerings, including: customized solutions for corporations; core speech technologies marketed to OEMs; end user and retail applications for continuous speech products in horizontal and vertical markets; and document creation, human and machine translation services, Internet translation offerings, and linguistic tools. L&H's products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), search and retrieval and audio mining and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit L&H on the World Wide Web at www.lhsl.com.