Contextual Speech Extraction: Leveraging Textual History as an Implicit Cue for Target Speech Extraction


Minsu Kim*, Rodrigo Mira*, Honglie Chen, Stavros Petridis, Maja Pantic
*Equal contribution
ICASSP 2025 [Paper] [Code]

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we investigate a novel approach for Target Speech Extraction (TSE), which relies solely on textual context to extract the target speech. We refer to this task as Contextual Speech Extraction (CSE). Unlike traditional TSE methods that rely on pre-recorded enrollment utterances, video of the target speaker's face, spatial information, or other explicit cues to identify the target stream, our proposed method requires only a few turns of previous dialogue (or monologue) history. This approach is naturally feasible in mobile messaging environments where voice recordings are typically preceded by textual dialogue that can be leveraged implicitly. We present three CSE models and analyze their performances on three datasets. Through our experiments, we demonstrate that even when the model relies purely on dialogue history, it can achieve over 90% accuracy in identifying the correct target stream with only two previous dialogue turns. Furthermore, we show that by leveraging both textual context and enrollment utterances as cues during training, we further enhance our model's flexibility and effectiveness, allowing us to use either cue during inference, or combine both for improved performance.

<CSE (Cascaded CSE, ContSep, ContExt) results on DailyTalk>

Mixed Speech (Input) Ground Truth Cascaded CSE ContSep ContExt
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk 1. Yes, that's our regular flight to Shanghai. What's your name, please?
Spk 2. I am Jenny Armstrong. My first initial is J.
Spk 1. One minute. Oh, yes, here we are. You are flying economy class, aren’t you?
Spk 2. Umm…. Yes, that's right.
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
... Spk1. I've made a tough decision, sir. Here's my resignation.
Spk2. Well, I have to tell you that I'm quite surprised. Is there any possible way to change your mind?
...
Spk 1. No, sir.
Spk 2. Have you been given a better offer?
Spk 1. Oh, no. I would never look for another job while working here. I think this is a fantastic place to work.
Spk 2. Well, what's the problem then?
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. Are you crying?
Spk2. Yes, I always cry at weddings.
Spk1. Harris and Anne are perfect for each other.
Spk2. Yes, they are.
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. Yes, I always cry at weddings.
Spk2. Harris and Anne are perfect for each other.
Spk1. Yes, they are.
Spk2. You and Tom also make a great couple.
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. I think Euros will be the best, as I'll only be in Mainland Europe.
Spk2. Of course. Do you have your passport with you? How much would you like to purchase?
Spk1. Five-thousand Euros will be sufficient, thanks.
Spk2. Please fill in this form. How would you like it? In hundred Euro cheques?
Audio

<CSE (Cascaded CSE, ContSep, ContExt) results on SpokenWOZ>

Mixed Speech (Input) Ground Truth Cascaded CSE ContSep ContExt
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. and there is a restaurant called ask restaurant can meet your requirement
Spk2. okay, great i want to book a table
Spk1. of course, how many people
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
... Spk1. the train will arrive by 18:01
Spk2. okay. and what are the train fires
Spk1. the train costs 14.32 pounds for each person
Spk2. ah yes, thank you
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. yes, i'm also looking for a place to go in town and i really want to you know have the thing that we could all sit together on the river
Spk2. okay. how about. the type of boat
Spk1. yes, yes, great then make it in the west
Spk2. okay. please hold on. i'm searching for
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. oh, yeah, i got a pop that wendell park.
Spk2. okay, that is perfect. matthews, get the postcode.
Spk1. so the post code cd223ae.
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. okay. can i pick h. id. number.
Spk2. yeah. yes, i 3, 0, 3.
Spk1. yes.
Spk2. 4, 4, 9.
Spk1. yes.
Spk2. 4 9 2
Spk1. yes.
Audio

<CSE (Cascaded CSE, ContSep, ContExt) results on TEDLIUM-3>

Mixed Speech (Input) Ground Truth Cascaded CSE ContSep ContExt
Previous
Textual
History
...
when michael bloomberg asked me to be his planning commissioner and put me in charge of shaping the entire city of new york
he said to me on that very day he said that new york was projected to grow from eight to nine million people and he asked me
so where are you going to put one million additional new yorkers
well i didn't have any idea
now you know that new york does place a high value on attracting immigrants so we were excited about the prospect of growth but
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
... alone until i let them have a piece but it was not a good one
well it occurred to me that i should invite dr robicsek to lecture at wofford college on what else
i should invite him to meet my oldest trustee who had majored in french history at yale some
largest privately owned textile empire with an iron hand his name is roger milliken
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
i'm talking of course about living organisms
living organisms are created by chemistry we are huge packages of chemicals
so chemistry is dominated by the electromagnetic force that operates over smaller scales than gravity which explains why you and i are smaller than stars or planets
now what are the ideal conditions for chemistry
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
dna accumulates information through random errors some of which just happen to work
but dna had actually generated a faster way of learning it had produced organisms with brains and those organisms can learn
learn in real time they accumulate information they learn the sad thing is when they die the information dies with them
now what makes humans different
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
they got on a boat and yet another divergence the boat was either going to canada or to australia they got on and didn't know where they were going and ended up in
to make a long story short they came to canada my grandmother was a chemist she worked at the banting institute in toronto
and at forty four she died of stomach cancer
i never met my grandmother but i carry on her name
Audio

< H-ContExt results on DailyTalk, SpokenWOZ, TEDLIUM-3>

Mixed Speech (Input) Ground Truth Using only Context Using only Voice Using both Context & Voice
Samples from DailyTalk
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk 1. Yes, that's our regular flight to Shanghai. What's your name, please?
Spk 2. I am Jenny Armstrong. My first initial is J.
Spk 1. One minute. Oh, yes, here we are. You are flying economy class, aren’t you?
Spk 2. Umm…. Yes, that's right.
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
... Spk1. I've made a tough decision, sir. Here's my resignation.
Spk2. Well, I have to tell you that I'm quite surprised. Is there any possible way to change your mind?
...
Spk 1. No, sir.
Spk 2. Have you been given a better offer?
Spk 1. Oh, no. I would never look for another job while working here. I think this is a fantastic place to work.
Spk 2. Well, what's the problem then?
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. Are you crying?
Spk2. Yes, I always cry at weddings.
Spk1. Harris and Anne are perfect for each other.
Spk2. Yes, they are.
Audio
Samples from SpokenWOZ
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. and there is a restaurant called ask restaurant can meet your requirement
Spk2. okay, great i want to book a table
Spk1. of course, how many people
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
... Spk1. the train will arrive by 18:01
Spk2. okay. and what are the train fires
Spk1. the train costs 14.32 pounds for each person
Spk2. ah yes, thank you
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
Spk1. yes, i'm also looking for a place to go in town and i really want to you know have the thing that we could all sit together on the river
Spk2. okay. how about. the type of boat
Spk1. yes, yes, great then make it in the west
Spk2. okay. please hold on. i'm searching for
Audio
Samples from TEDLIUM-3
Previous
Textual
History
...
when michael bloomberg asked me to be his planning commissioner and put me in charge of shaping the entire city of new york
he said to me on that very day he said that new york was projected to grow from eight to nine million people and he asked me
so where are you going to put one million additional new yorkers
well i didn't have any idea
now you know that new york does place a high value on attracting immigrants so we were excited about the prospect of growth but
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
... alone until i let them have a piece but it was not a good one
well it occurred to me that i should invite dr robicsek to lecture at wofford college on what else
i should invite him to meet my oldest trustee who had majored in french history at yale some
largest privately owned textile empire with an iron hand his name is roger milliken
Audio
Previous
Textual
History
...
i'm talking of course about living organisms
living organisms are created by chemistry we are huge packages of chemicals
so chemistry is dominated by the electromagnetic force that operates over smaller scales than gravity which explains why you and i are smaller than stars or planets
now what are the ideal conditions for chemistry
Audio