US Patent 8996381 Background speech recognition assistant

In one embodiment, a method receives an acoustic input signal at a speech recognizer configured to recognize the acoustic input signal in an always on mode. A set of responses based on the recognized acoustic input signal is determined and ranked based on criteria. A computing device determines if the response should be output based on a ranking of the response. The method determines an output method in a plurality of output methods based on the ranking of the response and outputs the response using the output method if it is determined the response should be output.