Getting real about speech: overdue or overhyped?

Speech has recently made headway towards becoming a more mainstream interface modality. For example, there is an increasing number of call center applications, especially in the airline and banking industries. However, speech still has many properties that cause its use to be problematic, such as its inappropriateness in both very quiet and very noisy environments, and the tendency of speech to increase cognitive load. Concerns about such problems are valid; however, they do not explain why the use of speech is so controversial in the HCI community. This panel would like to address the issues underlying the controversy around speech, by discussing the current state of the art, the reasons it is so difficult to build a good speech interface, and how HCI research can contribute to the development of speech interfaces.