Is Voice the Next Disruptor?
VoiceSignals #1 - Musings on Voice tech news
Mangrove Capital Partners released the Voice: Welcoming the next generation of disruptors report on Voice Tech for 2019 and while many of these type of reports are commissioned by specific companies (who are of course mentioned within) we found this different as it makes some good arguments and... predictions. For example they predict that by making humans smarter and more effective, voice-based SaaS offerings look set to become the most valuable generation of business software (yet) or that brands will soon be instantly recognisable through their ‘sonic identity’ and product search will change forever, while reiterating the voice community's expectations, from Apple, for a SiriOS release for its developer community at WWDC 2020 which would accelerate innovation and adoption.
Mangrove believes voice will be one of the defining themes of the next decade. As well as impacting every business with a digital presence, it will spawn a new generation of technology companies in every category. We agree; the opportunities we see are endless. Voice startups have raised $786m already this year, significantly exceeding the $581m raised in 2018 and $298m raised in 2017. This rise in funding reflects a growing belief that voice technology will be transformative. The size of fundraising(s) has also increased markedly–with an average of $30m so far in 2019 versus $18m in 2018 and $17.5m in 2017.
Voice Reveals More About Your Emotions
Alex Potamianos, CTO at Behavioral Signals, wrote about why voice reveals more about your emotions than your face. He talks about emotions in voice and how the human ability to capture subtle nuances in speech can be emulated for machines: AI systems are currently being programmed to start recognizing human emotion and responding in kind. Humans are often trying to “hide†or skew their emotions. In his book What Every Body is Saying, Joe Navarro explains that "...our face is the least truthful part of our body when it comes to emotional honesty...". In particular, we now know that voice is much more difficult to fake than facial expressions, and in general, both are difficult to fake for long periods of time.
Adobe Asks Should Voice Assistants be Human-like?
While Adobe has plans to integrate with Alexa to help in conversational UX design it also unveiled a survey showing the user experience challenges for consumers. It found that 94% of users see voice technology as an easy to use time saver. That’s the good news, but respondents (1,000 consumers that use voice technology) find complex tasks difficult. For instance, 61% of respondents said that they wouldn’t use voice technology for personal banking. And 51% said they wouldn’t use voice for booking travel. According to Adobe, 80% of respondents felt voice with visual elements were a good combination for more complex tasks. On the question Should voice assistants be human-like? it found that consumers are split nearly down the middle on whether voice technology should (51%) or should not (49%) have human-like attributes, such as sympathy and humor, as it continues to evolve.
Voice-Assisted Shopping
I'm a strong advocate of voice in retail. So much so, that when it comes to anything to do with voice-assisted shopping, people in the office stick my name on each sentence, Vicki will like this or as Vicki would say. A recent report by OC&C Strategy Consultants predicts that voice-assisted shopping will grow to $40 billion by 2022 (a 2000% increase from 2018’s total) in the US and UK alone. Estimates as recently as two years ago were much smaller, but adoption rates of smart speakers have accelerated rapidly in 2018 and it’s becoming a more pervasive technology through which shopping becomes a viable opportunity. As adoption rates climb, technology improves, and the user experience becomes more fluid, voice-assisted shopping is set to become the next evolution of online commerce. Go ahead and read our full article on how we believe voice will change retail.
Voice Activated Games
The voice-activated Monopoly is last month's news but I see it as just the beginning of a long string of games that will integrate voice in the near future. St. Noire, the long awaited Alexa-powered murder mystery board game, is finally out. It was featured at San Diego's Comic Con and from what it was announced it will cost $40 on Amazon. It features over a dozen voice actors and 2,500 lines of spoken dialogue, and is the world’s first fully-voice acted board game designed for Amazon Alexa. I wanna play now!
ˉ\_(?????)_/ˉ Wrapping it up here.
Maybe I should have said all this using my emotionally-enabled voice but not sure how many of you would have chosen to listen to it instead of ...reading it. Thoughts are welcome below in comments!
#voicefirst #voiceassistants #voiceAI #emotionAI #voicetech