Google Search Product Manager David Monsees has taken to the company’s blog to emphasize its commitment to privacy and clarify some of its policies around the use of audio data. The post was written after one of the company’s language experts leaked confidential Dutch audio data, with Monsees noting that the leak is a violation…
Nuance Communications is releasing a new voice recognition engine that can identify a speaker in less than a second without the use of a passphrase or any other personal information. Dubbed the Lightning Engine, the AI platform is built with deep neural net technology and can be deployed in virtual assistants, smart speakers, and other…
Amazon is facing a potential class action lawsuit due to its recording policies with Alexa. According to a report in The Seattle Times, the lawsuit was filed in Seattle on behalf of a ten-year-old girl in Massachusetts, and alleges that the tech giant has been illegally recording the conversations of children without the consent of…
“The BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant will include voice-activated safety features and a voice-activated car manual.” Nuance Automotive has found another partner for its conversational voice interface technology, announcing that its AI tech is being deployed in BMW’s Intelligent Personal Assistant. The Assistant offers support for 22 languages and will allow BMW drivers to control various…
Nuance Automotive has found another customer for its conversational AI, teaming up with Banma to bring better speech recognition to Chinese cars. A joint venture for Alibaba and SAIC Motor Corp., Banma will be deploying Nuance’s AI in the Banma MARS V3.0, a connected car infotainment platform that will make its first appearances in SAIC’s…
Google is consolidating its Nest and Google Home divisions with the Google Nest Hub Max, a slightly bigger version of the Google Home Hub (now the Google Nest Hub) speaker. Beyond the larger size (a 10-inch touchscreen instead of a 7-inch touchscreen), the Nest Hub Max’s most noteworthy addition is a new camera with facial…
The mobile biometrics revolution of the last several years has helped to drive excitement about a number of modalities, with voice being one of the most prominent. Voice has emerged as a key user interface on smartphones thanks to virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, and on smart home devices via platforms like Amazon’s Alexa. People…
“Perhaps most importantly, the system is designed to operate entirely on a given device, with no need for data to be sent to an external server for processing, helping to protect end users’ privacy.” Sensory Inc. is looking to bring sophisticated speech recognition technology to a range of mobile and Internet of Things devices with…
Voice recognition technology has been commercially available since Radio Rex hit store shelves in the 1920s, but it is only in the past decade that it started making serious inroads into the consumer market. The latest research suggests that trend will continue in the next ten years. A new report from IDTEchEx Research suggests…
Amazon is seeking to get its Alexa virtual assistant into more third party devices with the announcement that it has now opened up the SDK for its Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit. The development platform was first announced near the start of the year, when it was available for select headphone devices from Bose, Jabra, and…
Apple is hoping to leverage last week’s excitement about its new product announcements into some extra enthusiasm for its HomePod smart home speaker system, with a software update enhancing its capabilities. It’s essentially an AI upgrade. On the HomePod, Siri, Apple’s virtual AI assistant, can now search for songs by their lyrics, and perform other…
Nuance Communications says its voice control system for smart TVs is now seeing about a billion transactions a month. The solution, Dragon TV, essentially brings the functionality of a voice-controlled virtual assistant like Alexa to the television, allowing users to search for shows and perform other actions through voice queries. Nuance has established itself as…
“Speak With Me technology will be available for deployment across any automated vehicle fleet running AWare regardless of vehicle type or automated driving system.” A new partnership could help to bring artificial intelligence to more cars. The AI technology comes by way of Speak With Me, whose eponymous platform revolves around a conversational voice assistant.…
“First unveiled at the Baidu Create 2018 AI Developer Conference earlier this month, the solution holds considerable potential in the China market, where Baidu says its DuerOS AI platform is already being used by over 200 partners in 25 million devices.” Synaptics and Baidu have joined forces, announcing that the former’s AudioSmart far-field voice digital signal…