V.u.x. World

As much as Amazon and Google dominate the voice AI headlines, one size doesn't always fit all. There's a trend within the voice industry of brands creating their own voice assistants. The BBC have created Beeb, Mercedes have My Mercedes, Capital One; Eno and plenty of others are following.And even those who aren't creating their own high-level digital assistant to serve as the AI front-end to the companies products and services, many are wanting narrow implementations of voice AI across apps, IVR, the web and other channels where Alexa and Google .While you can use Amazon Lex and Google DialogFlow for these instances, some companies don't want their data to be held with those companies. Some want more control or even need more control over the language model.This is where Voxta plays: enabling the capability for brands to implement their own assistants. Co-Founders Kavita Reddi and Sirish Reddi join us to share how they do it.We chat about the approach to creating custom voice assistants, the v

Hannes Heikinheimo is the Co-Founder and CTO of Speechly, a voice AI company that specialises in adding voice capabilities to software products, and he joins us to discuss the benefits and steps you need to follow to do this.Hannes has deep experience in voice technologies, working with the Helsinki University of Technology, Nokia, Rovio and Apple, launching the Finnish Siri.We chat to Hannes about the Speechly technology, the drawbacks of traditional speech to text, the difficultly of language modelling the Finnish language, the advantage of voice-enalbed software, broader voice industry trends and how to add voice to your app.Companies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!Conversation Design Institute leads in training and certification for Conversation Designers, Conversational Copywriters, and AI Trainers. Our human-centric workflow has proven itself around the world. Our certificates

SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTEBecome a certified conversation designer and save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFFFIND OUT MOREVOICE AI DISTUPTIONVoice AI is disrupting industries and providing new opportunities to innovate for those companies paying attention.Voice AI, like most technology innovations is an enabler. It enables businesses to explore new markets, unlock new value and, in some cases, reinvent themselves.But technological capability isn't enough to grease the wheels of innovation. You need to find a place within the market that adds value, and have the tools and skills to take advantage.One of the most exciting companies that offers those tools and skills to unlock voice AI innovation is SoundHound.SoundHound is helping organisations reimagine their services and create differentiation and value for brands and, in some cases, where you'd least expect it.In this episode of VUX World Live, we're joined by SoundHound VP, Product Marketing, Mike Zagorsek, to find out how SoundHound are enab

We're joined by David Clark (BT) and Tim Atkinson (Google) to discuss the future of conversational commerce: RCS Messaging.SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTECompanies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!Conversation Design Institute leads in training and certification for Conversation Designers, Conversational Copywriters, and AI Trainers. Our human-centric workflow has proven itself around the world. Our certificates ensure you create winning conversational experiences.As advocates for the Conversation Design profession, we continue to work closely with tech partners, agencies and other key players in the industry. With this support, Conversation Design Institute is well on its way to becoming the number one platform in conversation design.FIND OUT MORELearn what RCS messaging is, and why it's set to enable the next level of two-way, automated B2C communication.Use it to scal

In this episode, we're joined by Constant Companion CEO, Mark Gray, to discuss the opportunities and need for creating voice-first services for older adults.Constant Companion are providing voice OS access to care homes, retirement centres and individuals across the US, with demand for its services increasing exponentially this year. For a small monthly fee, your gran, grandad, parent or friend, can have an Alexa-enabled device installed and set up in their home that runs on top of the Constant Companion OS.Make calls, automate tasks, stay connected, be entertained, all safely and securely behind military-grade security. What else would you expect from Mark Gray, career-long cyber security expert.Mark join us this week to share the opportunities that exist in providing accessible, voice-based services to older adults. With an ageing population of folks who don't think of themselves as 'old', and that hold almost 80% of America's disposable income, what can you create for these voice tech-adopting, connection

Algolia uses Open AI to up the conversational AI search gameAlgolia announced a suite of AI products that help make the search experience more natural and simpler, as well as adding immense power to chat bots and voice bots.In this episode, we run through the new updates and discuss their importance and usefulness for the voice industry.We discuss:Algolia Understand: The new Natural Language Understanding API from Algolia.The new API from Algolia that offers Alexa-like natural language understanding. Understand your users’ intents, increase conversion - in search experiences, or anywhere else.Algolia Answers: The best technologies from Algolia and OpenAI to answer the most difficult natural language questions.Algolia Answers finds not just the document, but the exact answer that best responds to the searcher’s question. Q&A adds real-world semantic knowledge to tunable textual relevance to find answers deep within unstructured content.Algolia Dynamic Synonym Suggestions: Find the best content on every sea

What happens when you serve audio adverts to smart speaker listeners and ask them to make a charitable donation right there and then on their smart speaker, using their voice? Say It Now CEO, Charlie Cadbury, joins us to share the answer.Amazon forecast voice commerce to be a $3.2billion market by 2022. That's not far away. And, during lockdown, in the UK, voice shopping rose from 22% up to 33% of smart speaker owners.I'll say that again: 33% of smart speaker owners in the UK say they have used their smart speaker for shopping this summer.Say It Now were one of the few lucky companies to be awarded Innovate UK funding to use technology to provide solutions to some of the core challenges brought about by Covid-19.One of those challenges is that charities across the country, organisations that survive on the kind donations of the public, took a huge hit. Donations are plummeting and some of the most vulnerable people in the country are at risk of missing out on vital support because charities are struggling to

Learn how to design chatbots the Salesforce way. We're joined by Greg Bennett, Conversation Design Principal, Salesforce, to discuss how Salesforce approach designing conversations for chatbots for their clients.With 70% of people claiming they wouldn't use a chatbot again after a single bad experience, it's more important than ever to create conversations that build trust and deliver what user's need.So how does Salesforce do that? How do you build trust through dialogue design? And how do you make sure that your chatbot can deliver on the core things your users need? Let's find out.We'll also dive into the Einstein Bot Builder and find out what kind of use cases Salesforce clients are exploring and what kind of value they're finding from leveraging the combination of conversational AI and CRM technologies.Whether you're a conversation designer looking to keep abreast of the latest methodologies or a marketer/strategist looking to find value in conversational AI, this episode of VUX World will dive deep to h

After covering the top new Alexa features for marketers and the top features for developers, we were getting a lot of questions from the community about the new Alexa features announced during Alexa Live 2020. So, what better way to dive deep into them than by sitting down with someone who had a hand in creating a great deal of them.Paul Cutsinger is known within the voice community for being one of the first Alexa developer evangelists and teaching people all over the world how to build skills. Now, he's moved into more of a product role where he brings the next most needed features to the platform.In this live podcast episode, we chatted to Paul about his role and dove deep into the ins and outs of some of the best and newest Alexa features for designers, developers and marketers, as well as fielded questions from the audience on skill building best practice.LinksAmazon Alexa Skills KitAlexa Skills Challenge: Alexa ConversationsFollow Paul on LinkedIn and Twitter See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-ou

Ron Jaworski, CEO Trinity Audio, joins us to share how to satisfy the user, the publisher and the advertiser with your audio strategy.The Holy Trinity of your audio strategyTrinity Audio's philosophy is to satisfy users, publishers and advertisers in an attempt to provide value to all three with audio. Trinity Audio's technology turns any webpage into audio using text to speech and allows publishers to then distribute that on their websites, as well as through any other audio channel, such as Spotify, podcast players, Flash Briefings, via an RSS feed. With ads built-in, publishers can repurpose existing content, distribute it in a variety of channels to reach more users, whilst generating incremental revenue at the same time. Your content strategy should have a Holy Trinity also: written, video and audio. Most publishers have the first two covered, but have been slow to start their audio revolution. In this episode, Ron Jaworski, CEO of Trinity Audio joins us to share how you can boost your aud

Einav Itamar is the founder and CEO of Voca.ai, a technology company specialising in IVR automation using conversational AI. He joins Dustin and Kane to chat about how to create human-like conversations for IVR bots, the impact of coronavirus on call centre demand and how organisations are approaching automating incoming call centre calls with AI.Need help with call centre automation? Book a free 20 minute consultation.Designing human-like voice bots for IVROne thing is for sure: Covid-19 hit call centres hard.Some saw the frailty of legacy systems and infrastructure that require you to be fixed at a desk. They had to close completely, unable to work remotely.Some could enable operatives to work from home, but they were snowed under with a barrage of calls. For some, it was well in excess of double call volumes.A few realised what was happening and acted. They implemented (or increased their usage of) conversational AI.Find out how they did, and how you can create human-like, automated conversations that

SPONSORED BY PROJECT VOICE CATALYSTProject Voice Catalyst is for companies working with voice and AI, whether heavily involved or just starting, it uses an extensive network to connect companies working with voice tech and conversational AI to new customers, partners, media, or investors, depending on needs and business objectives.Accelerating your business months ahead of where you otherwise would be.No matter what industry - publishing, healthcare, automotive, banking, gaming, hospitality - Project Voice: Catalyst is helping others and can help you.Contact Ray Kyle, Score Publishing's Director of Business Development, at Ray@ScorePublishing.us or (781) 929 1098 if you're interested in learning more.Automating call centres with AIMost contact centres have been overwhelmed during the covid period, struggling to meet the demand placed on them. Some call centres have even had to close due to unprecedented call volumes.At the same time, customers are ever more demanding. Expectations are through t

Sponsored by Project Voice CatalystProject Voice Catalyst is for companies working with voice and AI, whether heavily involved or just starting, it uses an extensive network to connect companies working with voice tech and conversational AI to new customers, partners, media, or investors, depending on needs and business objectives.Accelerating your business months ahead of where you otherwise would be.No matter what industry - publishing, healthcare, automotive, banking, gaming, hospitality - Project Voice: Catalyst is helping others and can help you.Contact Ray Kyle, Score Publishing's Director of Business Development, at Ray@ScorePublishing.us or (781) 929 1098 if you're interested in learning more.[/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]Multi model design for Google AssistantWe first spoke about multi modal design with Jan König of Jovo on one of the very first episodes of the VUX World podcast. Back then, Jan described Jovo's vision for a multi modal future, where the bes

Sponsored by Project Voice CatalystProject Voice Catalyst is for companies working with voice and AI, whether heavily involved or just starting, it uses an extensive network to connect companies working with voice tech and conversational AI to new customers, partners, media, or investors, depending on needs and business objectives.Accelerating your business months ahead of where you otherwise would be.No matter what industry - publishing, healthcare, automotive, banking, gaming, hospitality - Project Voice: Catalyst is helping others and can help you.Contact Ray Kyle, Score Publishing's Director of Business Development, at Ray@ScorePublishing.us or (781) 929 1098 if you're interested in learning more.UK voice assistant usageIf you build voice applications for Alexa and Google Assistant, this episode will give you insights that you can use to create more meaningful, impactful and delightful experiences, based on knowledge of how real people are actually using voice assistants right now in the UK

Sponsored by Project Voice CatalystProject Voice Catalyst is for companies working with voice and AI, whether heavily involved or just starting, it uses an extensive network to connect companies working with voice tech and conversational AI to new customers, partners, media, or investors, depending on needs and business objectives.Accelerating your business months ahead of where you otherwise would be.No matter what industry - publishing, healthcare, automotive, banking, gaming, hospitality - Project Voice: Catalyst is helping others and can help you.Contact Ray Kyle, Score Publishing's Director of Business Development, at Ray@ScorePublishing.us or (781) 929 1098 if you're interested in learning more.Using voice to make scientists more productiveWe always say that voice is quicker. That it can help you be more productive. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the workplace.LabVoice has been working with scientists in the lab using voice technology to streamline processes and help scientists be

Sponsored by Project Voice CatalystProject Voice Catalyst is for companies working with voice and AI, whether heavily involved or just starting, it uses an extensive network to connect companies working with voice tech and conversational AI to new customers, partners, media, or investors, depending on needs and business objectives.Accelerating your business months ahead of where you otherwise would be.No matter what industry - publishing, healthcare, automotive, banking, gaming, hospitality - Project Voice: Catalyst is helping others and can help you.Contact Ray Kyle, Score Publishing's Director of Business Development, at Ray@ScorePublishing.us or (781) 929 1098 if you're interested in learning more.Designing conversations for SMS messagingSMS messages have over 98% open rates within the first 5 minutes of sending. And, unlike Alexa or Google Assistant, where a user has to respond within 7 seconds or the chat closes, with SMS messaging, the conversation can remain open indefinitely.We often ta

Kane Simms and Dustin Coates rundown this week's top stories in voice and conversational AI.Top stories this week:Open AI APIThe Beeb, BBC's voice assistant in public BetaFlipkart launches voice assistant for webMicrosoft files patent for smart speakerVeritonic Audio Logo Index 2020 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Stories covered this week:Subvocal recognitionMIT Alterego Communicated with a Computer Through SubvocalizationNuEyes Partners with Third Eye for voice controlled device for low-visionGoogle assistant beta voice match for purchasesGoogle home is no more? Microsoft Cortana - new voice for work flow featuresApple glass leakedDatch - voice-visual platform for factories secures $3.2 mill in funding See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Magic happens when you take patterns and systems of nature and apply them to solve human problems.✈️ Aeroplane wings are inspired by birds

Every voice assistant needs three core components: Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Text-to-Speech (TTS). We've already covered what Automatic Speech Recognition is and how it works with Catherine Breslin and in this episode, we're covering the latter, text-to-speech.To guide us through the ins and outs of TTS, we're joined by Niclas Bergström, a TTS veteran and co-founder of one of the largest TTS companies on the planet, Readspeaker.Text-to-speech is the technology that gives voice assistants a voice. It's the thing that produces the synthetic vocal sound that's played from your smart speaker or phone whenever Alexa or Siri speaks. It's the only part of a voice assistant that you'd recognise. The other core components, ASR and NLU, are silent.And, given how we're hard wired for speech - a baby can recognise its mother's voice from the womb - how your voice assistant or voice user interface (VUI) sounds is one of the most important parts of it.A voice com