VUX World

This week's top stories:Google’s Read Along Vernacular.ai raises $5.1 million led by Exfinity Ventures, Kalaari CapitalHR AI system, Paradox AI gets 40m funding for replacing the ‘boring’ jobsConverseNow has closed a $3.25 million seed funding round led by Bala InvestmentsOmilia, a conversational artificial intelligence platform developer, has raised $20 million in a funding round led by Grafton CapitalGetting the tone right - automated copy generation has to be retrained in a time of crisisStores may use voice assistants to transform shopping, retail consultant saysIn a world fearful of touch, voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri are making our lives easierStartup adjusts medical voice assistant for a Zoom worldFrance launches AI voice assistant to help coronavirus patientsKaty Perry announces new album on AlexaSpirent approved to test AVS productsHow speech recognition techniques are helping to predict volcanoes’ behaviourThe Information by James GleikMIDI SproutLearn guitar on Google Assistant Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Music has been the top use case on smart speakers pretty much from the beginning. Having any song you like at your beckoning call makes playing music around the house easier than ever. And households that play music out loud are, apparently, happier households. It doesn't require too much thought, either. So, discoverability isn't as much of a challenge as with skills, actions and services. If you want to play some Michael Jackson, just ask. Having said that, music consumption habits are advancing. According to Pandora, more people are listening to up-beat, exercise music during lockdown, presumably to exercise to given the gyms are shut. And more people are listening to more ambient music, too, as well as child friendly playlists. People spending time at home and using their music service to relax and entertain the kids respectively. And there's a growing trend moving away from listening to artists and towards listening to playlists. Random compilations of different tunes grouped around a theme. And with smart speakers, we're seeing an insight into people's contexts with the music they ask to play. For example 'play BBQ music' might not be something you'd try and find on Spotify, but you might ask for it from your smart speaker. In the age of playlists, mood music and music on demand, how does a record label make sure that its catalogue of music is found and played on smart speakers? Well, that's what we're going to find out in this episode. In this episode: voice strategy at Sony MusicWe're joined by Dennis Kooker, President, Global Digital Business and US Sales, and Achim Matthes, Vice President, Partner Development, at Sony Music Entertainment. Dennis and Achim walk us through how Sony Music is thinking about voice, some of the behavioural trends they're seeing play out, how they make sure that, when you ask for a Sony Artist song, you get what you've asked for, what's involved in music discoverability, what trends they're seeing and where they see music and voice heading in future.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stories covered:Talking elevators and the Scottish elevator sketchContact centre voice biometricsGoogle Assistant's voice matchFacebook Chatbot, Blender, can talk about anything. See some sample dialogues and try it out.Juniper researchNPR Smart Audio ReportPandora's listening habit changesAI conference on Aminal FarmClaire Mitchell on VUX World Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dustin and Kane are joined by Patricia Scanlon, CEO SoapBox Labs, to discuss how its specialist speech technology for kids is being used and scaled across the globe to help kids learn to read and more.In this episode: voice tech for kidsImagine being able to have your child read to an iPad and have it tell them how they’re doing. Whether they’re pronouncing the words right and encouraging them to improve.Imagine, as a parent or teacher, being able to report on different child’s progress so that you can focus on the real areas that need improving.Well, this is what Soapbox Labs enables you to do with its specialist speech technology which you can use to build bespoke applications specifically for kids.You might be wondering 'why would I need speech technology specifically for kids?' Well, kids have totally different voices to adults. Their pitch is higher, they don't always pronounce words properly and it changes across the ages. A 5 year old's voice is different to a 10 year old's voice. Most of the speech recognition systems you'll be familiar with are trained on adult voices and don't tend to work too well for kids voices. In this episode, we expand on this and more with a deep discussion on just why voice technology for kids is so important, how the solution was created, what makes it unique and how you can use it to create life changing applications that help kids all over the world learn and entertain themselves. We discuss use cases in education, such as learning to read or learning a new language, as well as leisure, such as speech recognition in toys.After listening or watching this episode, you'll not only be equipped with the knowledge you need to create effective voice applications for kids, you'll also have a new appreciation for just how important this kind of technology is, what kind of opportunity exists in creation educational solutions for kids, but also just how important all of this is. About Patricia ScanlonPatricia Scanlon is the founder and CEO of SoapBox Labs, the award winning voice tech for kids company. Patricia holds a PhD and has over 20 years experience working in speech recognition technology, including at Bell Labs and IBM.Patricia has been granted 3 patents, with two pending. She is an acclaimed TEDx speaker, and in 2018 was named one of Forbes "Top 50 Women in Tech" globally.In 2013, inspired by the needs of her oldest child, Patricia envisioned a speech technology to redefine how children acquire literacy. She has successfully raised multiple rounds of both public and private funding to bolster research and product development, and her technical approach has been independently validated by the world's top three academic authorities on speech recognition.SoapBox Labs is based in Dublin and has a world class team of 22 employees.LinksGet a free 90 trial of the SoapBox Labs API:Visit soapboxlabs.comEmail hello@soapboxlabs.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Deborah Harrison was the very first writer on the Cortana team and defined the personality of Microsoft's digital assistant that is used on over 400m surfaces globally.In this talk, we chat to Deborah about the importance of personality and persona in conversational experiences, and the critical responsibility of ethical design.LinksFollow Deborah on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Voice search is growing. As smart speaker adoption increases and people use the voice assistants on their phones more and more, voice is playing an increasing role in more customer journeys.But what's your share of voice? How often does your company 'rank' for the search terms you'd like to rank for?Amazon and Google are tight-lipped about voice search volumes and don't offer any way of tracking voice search performance for websites, skills or actions.Thankfully, Andy Headington and his team at Adido, has created a tool that lets you do just that.In this episode, we speak to Andy about how you can measure your share of voice, and how you can find ways of identifying insights that will enable you to improve you voice search performance.LinksTry Share of Voice  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is speech recognition and how does it work?Automatics speech recognition (also known as ASR) is a suite of technology that takes audio signals containing speech, analysis it and converts it into text so that it can be read and understood by humans and machines. It's the technology that makes voice assistants like Amazon Alexa able to understand what a user says.There's obviously a whole lot more to it that than, though. So, in today's episode, we're speaking to one of the most knowledgable and experienced speech recognition minds the world has to offer, Catherine Breslin, about just exactly what's going on under the hood of automatic speech recognition technology and how it actually works.Catherine Breslin studied speech recognition at Cambridge, before working on speech recognition systems at Toshiba and eventually on the Amazon Alexa speech recognition team where she met the Godfather of Alexa, Jeff Adams. Catherine then joined Jeff at Cobalt Speech where she currently creates bespoke speech recognition systems and voice assistants for organisations.In this episode, you'll learn how one of the fundamental voice technologies works, from beginning to end. This will give you a rounded understanding of automatic speech recognition technology so that, when you're working on voice applications and conversational interfaces, you'll at least know how it's working and then be able to vet speech recognition systems appropriately.Presented by SparksSparks is a new podcast player app that lets you learn and retain knowledge while you listen.The Sparks team are looking for people just like you: podcast listeners who're also innovative early adopters of new tech, to try the beta app and provide feedback.Try it now at sparksapp.io/vux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Voice shopping on Alexa and Google Assistant smart speakers is a $2bn market today, and is forecast to explode. I've wrote about the potential of voice shopping for the Harvard Business Review last year, but things are starting to pick up.According Amazon's Patrick Gauthier, 20% of Americans are ready for voice shopping now, and 39% of all Americans will complete some part of their purchase journey via voice by 2022.And while it might not generate a huge percentage of sales today, the learnings that you'll gather through observing and collecting data on how customers are interacting with your brand, will be worth its weight in gold when the volcano erupts. Presented by SparksSparks is a new podcast player app that lets you learn and retain knowledge while you listen.The Sparks team are looking for people just like you: podcast listeners who're also innovative early adopters of new tech, to try the beta app and provide feedback.Try it now at sparksapp.io/vuxIntroducing Shilp Agarwal, CEO, BlutagOur guest today is Shilp Agarwal, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Blutag, the voice shopping platform making it possible for retailers to sell on Alexa and Google Assistant with ease. Shilp talks us through how he sees the voice shopping landscape today, how it's changed over the last two years, and why it's going to explode in the next 18 months.Some highlights for retailers considering Alexa for voice shoppingSelling via Alexa skills can have an ROI and offer some key learnings. Fresh Direct increased its shopping cart size by 12% with its Alexa skill, powered by Blutag.But the ROI is about more than sales. You can get ahead of your competition by excelling in customer experience, offering voice options at different stages of the customer journey. From product research and consideration, through ordering and delivery tracking, right through to post-sales.And you don't need to be all things to all people straight away. Instead, try focusing on smaller parts of the shopping experience that'll help you get moving quickly, offer some value immediately and learn from your users. Things like repeat purchases or delivery checking are ideal.One thing is for sure, voice shopping is on the horizon and getting ahead now will put you in a great position.LinksVisit blu.ai  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Corona virus hits voice as Google removes coronavirus actions, Spotify looks like it's releasing a voice assistant and Jovo lets you build voice assistants everywhere.Presented by SparksSparks is a new podcast player app that lets you learn and retain knowledge while you listen.The Sparks team are looking for people just like you: podcast listeners who're also innovative early adopters of new tech, to try the beta app and provide feedback.Try it now at sparksapp.io/vuxStories discussed in this episodeGoogle reject corona virus actionSpotify might be releasing a voice assistantJovo v3, build voice assistants and deploy them everywhereJovo Linkedin vlog Google Read ItGoogle Read It Linkedin vlogAlexa, the OSLive broadcasting on Alexa with the Food NetworkThe end of Alexa Skills?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Food Network aims to the be Peloton of cooking with live video broadcasting on Alexa. Director of Technology and Emerging Platforms at Discovery Inc., Tim McElreath, joins us to share how.Presented by SparksSparks is a new podcast player app that lets you learn and retain knowledge while you listen.The Sparks team are looking for people just like you: podcast listeners who're also innovative early adopters of new tech, to try the beta app and provide feedback.Try it now at sparksapp.io/vuxLive video broadcasting on AlexaThe Food Network are working closely with Amazon to build out features for live video broadcasting on Echo Show devices and aims to be the Peloton of cooking.Tim McElreath shares the story of what the Food Network is up to and how they see voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa shaping the future of engagement and content distribution in future. Through the Food Network app, you can pay a subscription to access premium content such as in-app live interactive cooking shows. This is what Tim is bringing to Alexa. Live cooking demonstrations with the ability for the audience to ask questions to Alexa and have those questions fed through to the presenter to be answered live.We also discuss the process of making live broadcasting happen and how it's being built as first party functionality. That means that the Food Network aren't building a skill for this. Instead, they're sending a feed and metadata to Amazon for Alexa to distribute it directly. Is this a sign of the future? Moving away from skills and towards feeding Alexa content with metadata directly?The Food Network aims to own the kitchen and Alexa is a big part of that. This episode will show you how Tim and his team are pursuing such goals and will have you thinking about how you can do the same.LinksTry the Food Network skill (US only)Connect with Tim on Twitter  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.