The Voicebot Podcast

Patricia Scanlon is the founder and executive chair of Soapbox Labs, the company behind the industry's leading automated speech recognition (ASR) for children. Scanlon has a PhD in speech recognition, signal processing, and machine learning from the University College Dublin, and previously was an adjunct lecturer at Trinity College and on the research staff of Nokia Bell Labs. She founded Soapbox Labs after recognizing that all leading ASRs were trained on adult speech data and showed poor results for children, particularly young children.  Since founding Soapbox Labs in 2013, the company has helped leading software providers bring ASR to education, gaming, and other applications designed for children. We discuss many of the applications and how education has changed since COVID.  Scanlon is also Ireland's AI Ambassador and we discuss market education for consumers, business, and government, as well as the draft EU AI Act. She was previously a guest on the Voicebot podcast in episodes 129 and 206, from 2019 and 2012, respectively. 

We return this week with the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for September 8, 2023. Get ready for a lot of product announcements and some special segments on NVIDIA and how cloud providers are influencing the competitive landscape: NVIDIA Blowout revenue - GPU purchases are upstream of generative AI software sales. NVIDIA just announced a record quarter that was nearly double the previous quarter and quarterly record. It also forecasted a new revenue quarter for the next quarter. We put into context how this will flow down into cloud and software revenue. Cloud Wars and LLMs - What role do the cloud hyperscalers AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud play in the LLM competitive landscape? We look at the ecosystems and how cloud distribution could make or break an LLM’s adoption. Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Commentary this week is led by Voicebot.ai’s head writer, Eric Schwartz, and Bret Kinsella from Synthedia and Voicebot. 😎 Generative AI News Links to the stories we covered this week are included below, in case you want to dig deeper on any of these stories. Featured Stories of the Week 🔦 NVIDIA's Monstrous Q2 Revenue Shows Generative AI Spending Ramp-up How the Cloud Hyperscalers are Shaping the Generative AI Market Generative AI Product Garden 🪴 Falcon 180B Shows That Open Models Can Rival Perfomance of leading Proprietary LLMs eBay’s New Generative AI Tool Creates Listings from Product Photos Marketing Platform HubSpot Showcases New Generative AI Strategy and Tools Intuit Assist Brings Generative AI Features and Chatbot for TurboTax and Mailchimp Zoom Expands and Renames Generative AI Assistant Following Privacy Furor Apple Enters the AI Race, Boosting Google in the Process `Generative AI Funding Fountain 💰⛲️ Context.ai Raises $3.5 Million for Generative AI Analytics Voice AI Reading Coach Startup Ello Raises $15M Generative AI in the World 🌏 OpenAI’s First Developer Conference More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn at 11 a.m. ET. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for August 31, 2023. Google may have dominated the headlines this week, but it was hardly alone. Special segments this week include: ChatGPT Enterprise - What was announced, where is it headed, and what are the implications? BTW, you may be interested in the Yammer go-to-market strategy reference as point 7 in the main article. We also put ChatGPT Enterprise in perspective alongside Google’s more ambitious play. Google Uses Cloud Next to Shift Generative AI Perception - We go through more than 15 different announcements and the implications for the market and debate the merit and importance of different moves. Generative AI winners and losers of the week. This week, Eric Schwartz, Voicebot.ai’s head writer, and I were joined by Google Developer Expert (GDE) Allen Firstenberg to break down the Google Gen AI Palooza and other top generative AI stories. Also, if you’d like to hear more from Allen, check out his Two Voice Devs podcast/YouTube show. Generative AI News Links to the stories we covered this week are included below. Like Perplexity AI, we give you source links! Featured Stories of the Week 🔦 ChatGPT Enterprise - 7 Things to Know About OpenAI’s Latest Product Google Cloud Announced Dozens of Generative AI Solutions and Reveals an Evolving Strategy Google Launches Duet AI Assistant for Workspace and Chat Google Cloud Unveils New Generative AI Tools for Building Search and Conversation Apps Generative AI Funding Fountain 💰⛲️ The Story Behind CoreWeave’s Rumored Rise to a $5-$8B Valuation Generative AI Infrastructure Startup Modular Raises $100M Hugging Face Lands $235M in Funding and a Giant New Valuation AI21 Labs Announces $155M Funding Round and Unicorn Valuation Generative AI Product Garden 🪴 AI21 Labs Revamps Wordtune into Generative AI Assistant for Enterprises Meta’s Code Llama is the New Open Source Alternative to GitHub Copilot ConverseNow Embeds ChatGPT and Google Bard LLMs into Restaurant Voice Assistant Gupshup Debuts Domain-Specific Generative AI LLMs Harman JBL Debuts First Smart Speakers with Simultaneous Alexa and Google Assistant Access (not generative AI, but interesting) Generative AI in the World 🌏 GM Taps Google Dialogflow for Onstar Generative AI Plans More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn at 11 a.m. ET. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen. You can also listen to GAIN each week on the Voicebot Podcast here. It posts first on YouTube and then typically hits all the main podcast players a couple of days later.

Oren Aharon is CEO and founder of Hour One, a leader in virtual human innovation, and a pioneer in generative AI. He joined Bret Kinsella to talk about how the technology behind virtual humans has evolved and the role generative AI is playing in the next set of features.  Hour One's new Reals Activate technology can transform any video into a scripted virtual human experience. It will align mouth movements and sounds to match a script to the video of a person. This means any video of you or anyone else can be transformed into a virtual human experience. Aharon debuted this technology for the first time publicly for the Voicebot Podcast audience.  If you would like to view the demos, a video of the full interview is available on Voicebot's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/voicebotai.  Aharon also talks about the market for virtual humans and how the rising interest in generative AI has accelerated use case adoption. He earned a Phd in electrical engineering from Technion and formerly was a co-founder at Kadoor Electronics and Vectorious Medical Technologies.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is back for August 24, 2023. Special segments this week include: What does the market data say about generative AI adoption? We look at 10 charts that explain a lot about what is happening, why it is happening, and where we are headed. Meta challenges OpenAI with an open-source automated speech recognition and translation system. Game on! Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Eric Schwartz, Voicebot.ai’s head writer, and Bret Kinsella gathered again this week to break down the top generative AI stories and a few other useful pieces of information. Generative AI News Links to the stories we covered this week are included below. Like Perplexity AI, we give you source links! Top Stories of the Week - Market Data 📊 Generative AI annual revenue will reach $1.3T in 2032 Generative AI adoption rate accelerates past smartphones and tablets See where generative AI will make the biggest financial impact on enterprises Two charts reveal why so many enterprises are rushing to adopt generative AI Generative AI shifts CEO focus to productivity over customer experience Developers are quickly adopting generative AI tools, especially GitHub Copilot NVIDIA announces financial results for the second quarter of 2024 Top Story of the Week - Market Dynamics 🗺 Meta launches new open-source speech recognition and translation model Generative AI Product Garden 🪴 OpenAI brings fine-tuning to GPT-3.5 Turbo and GPT-4 ElevenLabs launches multilingual generative AI voice model Allen Institute for AI releases largest open text dataset to boost AI research transparency Generative AI in the World 🌏 U.S. federal judge rules generative AI works ineligible for copyright TikTok parent company ByteDance releases generative AI chatbot in China More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn at 11 a.m. ET. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Sarah Rojewski, Telefonica's manager of AI and automation in Germany, and Patrick Esslinger, co-founder of VUI Agency joined Bret Kinsella to talk about the evolution of conversational AI in the contact center and the introduction of generative AI. Rojewski even goes into detail about the latest generative AI project and how the company is looking at the technology. That is supplemented by a conversation about user experience and how AI technologies require new thinking and are accompanied by different customer expectations.  Prior to her role leading AI inititiaves, Sarah Rojewski spent three years working on Telefonica's Aura voice assistant. Patrick Esslinger co-founded VUI Agency in 2017 and specializes in voice user interface design for enterprise applications. 

It’s time for the Generative AI News (GAIN) Rundown for August 17, 2023. Special segments this week include: Using GPT-4 to moderate LLM inputs The groups pressuring CEOs to adopt generative AI Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Voicebot.ai’s head writer, Eric Schwartz, joined Bret Kinsella this week to break down all of the top industry stories. Generative AI News Links related to the stories are included below if you want to go deeper into any topics. Top Stories of the Week OpenAI wants you to use GPT-4 to moderate your GPT-4 based applications Two charts reveal why so many enterprises are rushing to adopt generative AI Generative AI Funding Fountain The $100M Anthropic deal with SK Telecom provides insight into where LLMs are headed Voiceflow added $15M in new funding on the back of rapid user growth and generative AI DynamoFL raises $15.1M to scale privacy-focused generative AI for enterprises OpenAI acquires digital studio Global Illumination Generative AI Product Garden IBM Embeds Meta’s Llama 2 LLM in New Watsonx generative AI platform Amazon deploys generative AI for summarizing product reviews Google rolls out new generative AI search features U.S. DoD forms generative AI task force Roblox is deploying its own generative AI models and infrastructure at lower cost Detecting Deepfakes - Pindrop demos its anti-fraud voice clone detection More About GAIN   GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for August 11, 2023 is here. Special segments this week include: GPTBot and OpenAI’s plans to politely crawl the web, along with how most websites will react or should react Amazon’s generative AI strategy and how that will carve out unique positioning compared to OpenAI, Google, and others The significance of Alexa’s top exec shifting to generative AI Generative AI winners and losers of the week. My Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz and I were joined this week by Vixen Labs CEO James Poulter to go deep on our first four stories. Thanks James! 🦊 Generative AI News Links related to the stories are included below if you want to go deeper into any topics. Top Stories of the Week GPTBot and OpenAI’s plans to politely crawl the web Amazon’s generative AI strategy, its three-tier model, and market positioning The significance of Alexa’s top exec shifting to generative AI Generative AI Funding Fountain Weights & Biases raises $50M on a $1.25B valuation and what this says about the generative AI tools market Tome is rumored to be raising a new round and seeking a $600M valuation, double its February 2023 round Generative AI Product Garden NVIDIA and Hugging Face partner on new generative AI training service Cohere debuts enterprise generative AI chatbot Coral Brands in Generative AI Lands Google and Universal Music Group pursue licensing deal for deepfake songs Zoom adjusts policy on generative AI training with customer data following public outcry Apple finally begins focusing on generative AI with a new hiring spree More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen. Or, just listen to the podcast here!

Eric Schwartz, the head writer at Voicebot.ai, joined Bret Kinsella to break down the top Generative AI News (GAIN) of the week. Generative AI News - Featured Stories this Week OpenAI rumors spread for GPT-5 and the open-source G3PO. Is this the response to Meta’s Llama 2? Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are both expected to add generative AI capabilities in 2023. Could this finally lead to the blending of doing and knowing assistants? Generative AI Funding Fountain Inworld raised another $50M+ to bring total funding to around $120 million and now claims to have a $500 million valuation. Generative AI Product Garden Meta releases the open-source text-to-sound generator AudioCraft. Apple removes over 100 iOS apps from the Chinese App Store in advance of the new generative AI rules taking effect. Google Deepmind debuts a new generative AI communication language for instructing robots. And it works! Stack Overflow announced tentative steps into generative AI land with OverflowAI. News mobile app Artifact introduces celebrity voice clones you can have read the news to you. Winners and Losers We concluded with our generative AI winners and losers of the week. More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen. Or, just listen here. You decide!

Eric Schwartz, the head writer at Voicebot.ai, was joined by GAIN producer and Synthedia researcher Andrew Herndon. Generative AI News - Featured Stories of the Week OpenAI introduces Custom Instructions to add personalization to ChatGPT. OpenAI removed its Text Classifier that was supposed to identify whether content was AI-written because it didn’t work. Of course, Turnitin and others still say they can spot AI-written text, but provides no evidence to back up the claims. Synthedia was the first to break this story BTW. The ChatGPT App for Android racked up over 1 million downloads in 24 hours, more than a week faster than the iOS app reached that milestone. Synthedia also was the first to break this story 😀. Generative AI Product Garden Perplexity AI adds image search and debuts a Llama 2 integration. Stability AI introduces Stable XL 1.0 Grammarly introduces new generative AI features for students with GrammarlyGo. Wayfair introduces generative AI for virtual interior creations Frontier Model Forum from OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic seeks to monitor generative AI development. AI developers to adopt the White House’s AI Safety Principles Generative AI winners and losers of the week.