The Voicebot Podcast

Danny Tomsett is the founder and CEO of UneeQ. He founded the company in 2009. It was originally called FaceMe and was focused on video chat with humans for customer service. The idea was ahead of its time. Several years ago the company shifted to the virtual human solution at a time when conversational AI and visual rendering techniques were just coming into their own. UneeQ today is one of the leaders in software for creating virtual humans for customer contact centers, marketing, and other applications. The company may be best known for its digital einstein virtual human which you can interact with at digitalhumans.com.

Lauren Kunze became CEO of Pandorabots in 2013. However, her involvement with the company goes back to 2002. As a teenager she developed one of the first chatbots, Lauren bot, using the company's technology. So, Lauren has had a front row seat to the many phases of bot development. Twenty years' worth of insights. She graduated from Harvard with degrees in English and Neurobiology.   Pandorabots has over a quarter of a million registered developers on its platforms, has been used to create more than 300,000 chatbots, and has managed 75 billion conversational interactions. They also have the award-winning Kuki virtual human.

Rob Hayes is head of product at Voiceflow. He spent the past 18 months helping transform the no-code builder for Alexa skills into a multi-platform design and prototyping solution for enterprise-grade conversational experiences. Today, Voiceflow has over 60,000 users of its software which offers some unique insights into trends for the conversation design and development communities.  Prior to Voiceflow, Hayes had an independent product management consultancy. His work included a nine-month tour as interim head of product at Ada, the AI-backed chatbot company that recently achieved unicorn status after a $130 million funding round. 

Amir Hirsh (CEO) and Gal Klein (CTO) are co-founders of Audioburst. We gathered in Clubhouse to discuss analyzing, segmenting, packaging and making talk audio content discoverable in real-time. Audioburst is doing this daily on millions of minutes of radio and podcast content and the same technology could be applied to social audio. We discuss how it could make social audio conversations more easily discoverable in the moment and enable the best elements of those discussions to be easily accessed afterward.

Spotify recently released a custom voice assistant called 'Hey Spotify,' acquired (then rebranded) Locker Room as the foundation of a new social audio feature, and announced a new in-car voice-interactive device for audio content while on the go. I gathered some Spotify experts in Clubhouse to break down Spotify's voice AI and social audio strategy and its implications. Guests include: Air Greenberg - Formerly head of voice marketing at Spotify Dave Kemp - Creator of Future Ear Radio Chris Messina - Former product leader at Google & Uber, one of the earliest U.S. users of Spotify Eric Schwartz - Head writer at Voicebot.ai

Dr. Patricia Scanlon is CEO and co-founder of SoapBox Labs, the leading company focused on voice recognition technology for children. Most voice recognition solutions today are optimized for adult speakers and have high error rates when applied to children's vocal patterns which are constrained by immature biological development and language proficiency. SoapBox Labs was created to fill this gap in ASR performance for kids. In today's interview, Scanlon discusses the EdTech market, the changing perceptions of venture capital related to the segment, new applications for speech recognition for children, and how COVID-19 has impacted the market. Dr. Patricia Scanlon earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and then went on to complete her PhD in speech recognition with a focus on signal processing and machine learning at the University College Dublin. Those studies included research at both Columbia University and IBM. That was followed by seven years on the research staff at Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent before founding SoapBox Labs. 

Microsoft announced a $20 billion acquisition of Nuance this past week and Voicebot invited four experts in the field to help break down why the deal makes sense and what it means for the industry.  Kavita Reddi is co-founder of Voxta, a provider of automated speech recognition technology for call centers and embedded products.  Tom Hebner is vice president of Nueraflash and previously spent a dozen years as head of innovation for voice and AI technology at Nuance.  Nate Treloar is co-founder and president of Orbita a leading provider of conversational AI technologies to healthcare providers.  Paul Sweeney is co-founder and EVP of product at Webio a conversational AI middleware provider for contacts centers in financial services and collections.   

Today, we talk voice-first games, other interactive audio content, and creating voice experiences for the smart speaker, smartphone, and in the car. Our guests have many years of successful game development for voice and on other platforms. Sarah Andrew Wilson is Chief Content Officer of Matchbox.io which is better known for its popular games voice games such as Question of the Day, Guess My Name, and Kids Quiz. Matchbox began building games as Alexa Skills and now also has a mobile app and podcast. We discuss that migration in today's discussion. Max Child is CEO and co-founder of Volley, a game maker that began with conversational experiences for messaging apps that went all-in on Alexa skill games and now also has a mobile app for its games and podcasts. Some of its well-known games include Song Quiz, Yes Sire, and Popcorn Tycoon. Doppio Games co-founder and CEO Jeferson Valadares has a long history in the gaming industry for mobile, console, and desktop that included executive roles at EA and Bandai Namco. Doppio is known for its Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant games The Vortex, The 3% Challenge, and Pac-Man Waka Waka. Rounding out our speaker roster is Niko Vuori, CEO of Drive.fm. The Drive.fm mobile app is built for commuters and offers a wide range of entertainment options including interactive quizzes such as the Drivetime show, Jeopardy which includes voice tracks from Alex Trebeck, and other audio entertainment. Niko is another games industry veteran having co-founded Rocket Games and holding past executive roles at ToyTalk and Zynga.

Per Ottosson is CEO of Artificial Solutions, the Sweden-based maker of Teneo software used for building custom chatbots, virtual assistants, and conversational interfaces in over 80 languages. He joined the company in 2020 after a decade in leadership roles at IPSoft and two decades in enterprise software. Teneo is a popular software solution for contact centers that is also used for product integrations and marketing applications. The company's big focus of late has been its partnership with Microsoft which includes integration with the LUIS NLU and access to Teneo through the Azure cloud. We discuss where the industry has been, what's driving activity today, and where we are headed.  

Tiny microphones and speakers are key enablers of the voice assistant revolution. From smart speakers to smart wireless earbuds (hearables), the audio components make it possible for voice assistants to communicate. Knowles Corporation is a leading supplier of these audio components for edge devices selling about $800 million in revenue annually. Brian Crannell is the SVP that oversees the development of audio solutions. He has been with Knowles for a decade, has degrees in mechanical engineering and law, and 25 years in consumer electronics.