Voice assistants with the Golden Eye (CAI & NLP 007)
Kane Simms
??Triple Award-Winning AI Automation Consultancy ?? VUX. helps businesses leverage AI… Properly.
Bond, James Bond. 007. That means there’s been 7 of these newsletters so far, and I hope you’re enjoying them as much as Greg Nottage:?
“Enjoying the newsletter Kane. Keep them coming please!”
Thank you, Greg. I will.
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Presented by?Deepgram; industry-leading Automatic Speech Recognition, and?Symbl.ai; conversational intelligence for developers.
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Live tonight. Join me?
Join me tonight on LinkedIn Live as I speak with Surbhi Rathore, CEO, Symbl.ai, about how brands are utilising conversational intelligence (intel you probably didn't even know existed) to improve customer experience and business operations.
New releases
Voice controlled adjustable dumbbells:?fad or convenient?
NordicTrack from iFit has just unveiled a pair of brand new adjustable dumbbells that are compatible with Alexa.
The thing that was baffling me is how these dumb bells can get heavier or lighter. The size and weight is the size and weight, surely?
Turns out that to make them heavier, you have to actually add pieces onto the end of the dumb bells. You do that by putting them back in the holder, and turning a knob to the weight you’d like.?
Having Alexa built in is cool, but by the time you put the dumb bells down, your hands are literally right next to the weight-setting knob.?
Having voice as another control mechanism is nice but whether it adds something practically, who knows.
Rumours
Samsung is reportedly working on the Galaxy Home 2 smart speaker.?We thought Bixby's days were numbered after Adam Cheyer, the creator of Bixby, left Samsung, but it looks like Bixby is alive and well, and Samsung fancy their chances in the smart speaker market.?
I suppose we should expect nothing less that the 6th most innovative company in the world.
Funding?
Why do some articles sensationalise things? "First widely accepted application of voice and AI technology in healthcare". It seems Nuance has been doing the exact same thing for decades.
Anyway, that’s not to say the use case isn’t cool. DeepScribe saves physicians an average of three hours a day and costs approximately one-sixth the cost of human medical scribes. To date, DeepScribe has saved physicians over 2.5 million minutes of documentation… Nice.?
Among the investors:?Zoom, who also invested in Genesys latest round of funding. Zoom can smell what's coming.?
Partnerships and deals
Disruptel, the interactive TV and AI company, signs partnership with consumer electronics brand, TCL, to bring voice capabilities to TVs.
Rather than being able to simply control the TV, the product Disruptel is building will enable people to ask questions about the content they're watching. Unsurprisingly, there's a monetisation angle, which will allow brands to potentially advertise through it.
Imagine being able to ask your TV "what's that jacket James Bond is wearing?" and having a Belstaff-paid placement pop up on screen which enables you to buy the jacket there and then. That looks like it's where its heading.?
Speaking ov TV, there's been some colour shined on the SoundHound and Netflix partnership with more details on what it'll actually include.
Users will be able to say things like:
?“Show me historical tv shows on Netflix”
?? “Find me drama movies, but only ones from the 1980s and exclude ones that are more than 2 hours long.”
领英推荐
?? “Turn down the family room lights”?
?? “I want to order some food”?
So not only will soundhound be providing the navigation, but Netflix users can also tap into SoundHound's voice assistant domains to get other information and perform other tasks. This turns the voice user interface into a kind of Netflix assistant.?
The question I have is whether the context is right for those additional capabilities. Will someone order food or check the whether while within the Netflix app? Maybe. Take a look:
For those who’ve never tried the Microsoft Azure AI stack, you really should. It’s probably the best stack from the big players. Swisscom utilise it via Artificial Solutions' and, apparently, the BBC voice assistant, Beeb, was built using it.?
While Google and Amazon are both pretty good at shouting from the rooftops about their capabilities, Microsoft are a little more subtle, but just as powerful.?
To learn more, check out this podcast we did with Gary Pretty and Quirine Van Walt Meyer looking to the Azure Bot Framework and other tools.
Acquisitions
"Misty Robotics today announces that the company is acquired by?Furhat Robotics, the Swedish company behind the world’s most advanced social robot, ‘Furhat’. Furhat Robotics will continue to support the Misty Robotics brand and all of Misty’s customers, and empower future Misty robots through the strength of their technology. For Misty’s existing customers, nothing will change apart from the exciting addition of an extended community and more knowledge and research available."
For now.
Coming up: live events
Drastically improving chatbot performance with Benoit Alvarez, CTO, QBox
Most chatbots are rubbish. Let's face it. The only way you can improve the ability for chatbots to respond better is if you work on its ability to understand people.
That's what QBox does.
We're joined by CTO, Benoit Alvarez, to discuss why most companies have trouble building successful bots and how the QBox tooling drastically improves your chatbot's performance.
It's this Wednesday.?
Catch up on VUX World
Using AI to improve business processes with Scotty Technologies’ Roland Hallebeek and Reiner Bruns
We discuss the Scotty Technologies approach to customer experience automation and augmentation and how its conversational AI platform is delivering value to businesses from across industries including recruitment, healthcare and retail.
The value of emotional AI with Rana Gujral, CEO, Behavioral Signals
Rana Gujral, CEO, Behavioral Signals, joins us to share how Behavioral Signals emotional AI mediated technology is leading to 12-17% revenue improvement, +8% Call Success Ratio and +10% Customer Satisfaction in the call centre.
That's all folks
Thanks for stopping by. If you have a breaking story or find something cool, hit me up on LinkedIn and I might well feature it here next week.?
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VUX World is the front door to the world of AI-powered customer experience, helping business leaders and teams understand why voice, conversational AI and NLP technologies are revolutionising how we live, work and get things done.
We help executives formulate the future of customer experience strategies and guide teams in designing, building and implementing revolutionary products and services built on emerging AI and NLP technologies.