“It’s a clear signal that Google wants to get as many partners into its AI ecosystem as possible.” Google is aiming to connect more third party partners and devices to its Google Assistant AI platform, if its big new announcement for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show offers any indication. Detailing its Google Assistant innovations for…
“Many consumer electronics OEMs want to get into the fast-growing market for smart speakers, but they don’t want to use another brand’s wake word or risk their customers’ privacy and personal data to do so. Sensory now has an affordable solution that offers these companies access to a user-friendly voice UX for Bluetooth speakers that…
Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant will soon be able to buy and sell stocks via voice command. The functionality is currently being developed by DeepSearch, a Korea-based data analytics service whose platform is designed to deliver important information about publicly traded companies to end users. Accordingly, as the Korea Herald reports, the new Bixby capability will…
Nuance Communications has signed an agreement to sell its Document Imaging division to Kofax, an automation software provider based in California. The deal is valued at $400 million in total. In a statement announcing the agreement, Nuance explained that selling off the Document Imaging division “enables Nuance to focus the business entirely on its conversational…
Another major healthcare network has deployed Nuance‘s clinical automation technology. The Piedmont Healthcare network spans 11 hospitals across Georgia, and serves almost two million patients, with particular expertise the treatment of cancer and heart disease, as well as organ transplantation. The organization has implemented Dragon Medical One, Nuance’s voice dictation platform for recording patient stories,…
Silicon Valley-based noHold has now launched its own voice-based virtual assistant on its SICURA platform. Called SICURA Voice, the solution is able to respond to multiple different users and is designed to offer natural speech recognition. It supports 13 languages, and is aimed at the enterprise sector, allowing client companies to create their own custom…
“The company has sought to make sophisticated AI a key selling point of its newest hardware products, and its rivals have also been pouring money into AI R&D as consumer expectations shift to demand smarter products and services.” Google has updated the user interface for its virtual assistant platform, seeking to both accommodate use trends…
Sensory, Inc. has upgraded the wake word technology of its TrulyHandsfree platform to better ensure that a device won’t be activated by a so-called ‘false fire’ – that is, it won’t mistake a different word for its wake word and activate. The company says that TrulyHandsfree 6.0 uses a new high-resolution engine that is 65…
Google’s leadership is betting on sophisticated conversational AI as the next big technological leap, suggest comments from the company’s head of search, Ben Gomes, on Google’s 20th anniversary. Speaking to The Guardian, Gomes placed a strong emphasis on the evolution of speech recognition technology, highlighting Google’s efforts over time including its initial experiments in the…
San Diego-based speech recognition firm LumenVox and Munich-based voice recognition specialist VoiceTrust have merged to form a new company focused on offering speech-driven biometric authentication solutions. The new company, which has not yet been named, is majority owned by Ramphastos Investments, a venture capital firm based in the Netherlands. In a statement, LumenVox and VoiceTrust…
“…BMW Group emphasized its artificial intelligence, asserting that it can learn the driver’s habits, allowing it to offer directions based on a command like, ‘Take me home.’” BMW cars will get their own virtual assistant early next year, dubbed the “BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant.” The system will allow drivers to adjust various in-car settings on…
Apple is hoping to leverage this 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…
“…it delivers AudioSmart’s key speech recognition capabilities, including acoustic echo cancellation and voice targeting.” Synaptics has adapted its AudioSmart Far-Field Voice (FFV) technology for emerging set-top-boxes. Its new solution, the VideoSmart VS-550 multimedia processor, features a quad-core 15K DMIPs processor, and arrives as a single-chip solution for device makers. It’s designed for Android TV set-top…
A pair of researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have devised a novel approach to online authentication that leverages speech recognition and a smartwatch. Dubbed ‘Listening-Watch’, the system requires a given user to download a security app on their smartwatch device. When authenticating through a PC or laptop, the computer will play a…
“Adding far-field voice recognition to our TV lineup provides consumers with a more natural and convenient viewing experience.” -Bryan Huang, Product Center Director, TCL Synaptics‘ far-field voice technology is now being used in new smart TV’s to support their use of Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based AI assistant. The TVs are made by TCL, a China-based electronics…
Further evidence has emerged that Facebook is indeed working on its own smart speaker system, as well as an AI assistant to operate it. The latest, and perhaps biggest, clue comes by way of code found in the Facebook and Messenger Android app by mobile researcher Jane Manchun Wong. The code enables a rudimentary speech…
“Clinical documentation in the healthcare market will be a leading driver going forward, Tractica says – good news for companies like Nuance Communications, which is already gaining a foothold with its Dragon Medical platform. “ Tractica is predicting some major growth for the voice and speech recognition market over the next several years. The market…
“Google Assistant is only two years old, but users certainly don’t talk to it like a two-year-old.” These days, it’s not unusual for someone to set their alarm by voice command, whether it’s through a phone or a smart speaker device. But there is a huge amount of variety in how people say it –…
Nuance says it’s seeing growing international demand for its clinical dictation technology, and that it’s expanding accordingly. In a statement, the company elaborated on these efforts by focusing on its initiatives in the UK and Canada. In Britain, Nuance has begun to roll out its Dragon Medical One platform, which it has connected with the…
