Sensory Updates TrulyHandsfree with Capabilities That Align With the Voice Interoperability Initiative Led by Amazon Sensory, a leader in embedded voice, vision and biometrics AI announces new capabilities for TrulyHandsfree™, the company's widely-deployed wake word engine, that enables support for multiple wake words from any combination of leading brands, custom branded wake words, small vocabulary command sets or even user defined wake words where the end user can create their own phrase. This technology supports…

 Orbita, Inc., provider of healthcare's most powerful conversational AI platform, announced the release of the Voice Assistant Consumer Adoption Report for Healthcare 2019. To develop this report, Orbita sponsored independent research by Voicebot.ai, the leading online publication and research source dedicated to voice and AI technologies. Based on a survey of 1,004 U.S. adults, the report includes these key highlights: Orbita's newest platform features provide enterprise-grade, end-to-end…

Global Connected Consumer Index Highlights Need for Marketers to Strike a Relevancy Balance to Deliver Personalization and Brand Value Without Alienating Consumers Global B2C marketing automation company, Selligent, published the Selligent Global Connected Consumer Index, a global study of 5,000 consumers focused on behaviors and expectations as it relates to interactions with brands. Sixty-nine percent of surveyed consumers find it “creepy” when they receive ads based on unprompted cues from voice assistants like Apple’s…

New research reveals that more than three-fifths of Brits (62%) don’t use their smartphone’s pre-loaded voice assistant capabilities. But for those that do, it suggests the greatest opportunity lies in their cars. AI and data-driven agency Artefact UK surveyed 2,000 British adults to understand how people are interacting with voice assistants both in and out of the home. It revealed that of the 38% of people that do use voice assistants on their phones, nearly half (47%) use them while driving, compared to only a quarter…

Whetstone Technologies announces the general availability of the SoniBridge platform, spanning the gap between voice assistants and mobile marketing via text messaging.  The company will be demonstrating their patent-pending, voice-first technology at the 2019 VOICE Summit in Newark, NJ from July 22-25. "We developed the SoniBridge platform to close the customer engagement loop while delivering a frictionless, beneficial user experience.  Our technology enables clients to increase offer redemption and lead generation…

Branding on audio assistants is in its infancy, but brands should prepare for a new audio-focused world Voice assistants and smart speakers have become the latest consumer-electronic devices to transform the marketing industry. The number of speakers and assistants in the U.S. is now more than 180 million, and voice-driven informational searches and interactions have become interwoven in many consumers daily lives. With the rise of VUI, marketers are faced with vital questions. Does our branding transcend into audio? If…

Uberall Study Finds That SMBs Prefer Alexa over Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana Uberall, Inc., the location marketing solution for businesses competing to attract and win local brick-and-mortar customers, released a new study about how SMB (small- and medium-sized business) marketers feel about interactive voice technology. Interactive voice is the 2-way engagement that a consumer has with a voice assistant like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or Apple’s Siri. People can use these assistants in many different places like…

User Spending via Voice Assistants Is Expected to Grow as Much as Six Times in Three Years Capgemini's Digital Transformation Institute has recently released a new report titled, "Conversational Commerce: Why Consumers Are Embracing Voice Assistants in Their Lives," which highlights how consumers are using voice assistants and the opportunities this creates for businesses to connect with their customers. The report, which surveyed more than 5,000 consumers in the US, UK, France, and Germany, found that voice…

Companies Will Leverage Extensive Knowledge in Conversational AI to Solve Customer Experience Challenges for Health Care OZ, a global consulting company enhancing customer experiences through digital innovation, has announced its partnership with Orbita, Inc., the healthcare industry’s leader in conversational AI for enterprise-grade voice- and chatbot-powered virtual assistants. OZ will combine its digital innovation and development services with Orbita’s market-leading platform to create unique, customer experience (CX)…

Cognitive Automation, Neural Intelligence, Emotional AI, Conversation Assistants, and Proximity Guides -- AI as a Technology Has Come a Long Way Since Its First Mention in a Sci-Fi Novel in the Last Century I always felt that Issac Asimov and Sigmund Freud would have made a fabulous pair as a CTO and a CMO, running a tech company in 2018. Why? Science and creativity, with a touch of human emotion, can solve all the pain points that marketers face today. Most marketing leaders would agree that AI will remain a …

AtmosControl is the world’s first standalone smart home hub that can decipher voice commands completely on-board, without sending your voice data to the cloud, making Atmos Home the leader in smart home privacy Atmos Home, the award-winning provider of smart home control systems and accessories, announces its AtmosControl smart home hub locally deciphers commands without sending your voice recordings to cloud-based servers, creating the world’s first-ever privacy-focused standalone smart home hub for homeowners. The…

In its bid to simplify ordering, payments and delivery of essentials during the lockdown, PayNearby, India’s fastest growing hyperlocal Fintech startup has now expanded its hyper local discovery and purchase app ‘BuyNearby’ to Pan India operations. The app has helped more than 2 lakh+ kirana shops across the country take their stores online. Besides the local kiranas, the platform hosts a wide range of retailers inclusive of -- groceries, pharmacies, sweet stores, supermarkets, milk & dairy products, branded specialty…

Voice-interactive devices in use to double by 2024 A new report from Juniper Research has found that consumers will interact with voice assistants on over 8.4 billion devices by 2024; overtaking the world’s population and growing 113% compared to the 4.2 billion devices expected to be in use by year end 2020. Despite this, monetisation of the voice assistants themselves remains a challenge. “Ingrained habits of how devices are used will restrict opportunities for voice assistants and voice commerce” Need for…

Unisys to provide enhanced features, including visual voicemail, to improve user experience Unisys Corporation announced that Telefónica, one of the world's largest telephone operators and mobile network providers, has expanded its successful partnership with Unisys in Europe to provide secure, next generation voicemail services to millions of Telefónica Deutschland customers in Germany. Unisys communications solutions support more than 200 million mobile subscribers around the world. Under the terms of a mid-term…

Analyst Report Recognizes 7.ai for Leadership in Unified Voice and Digital Solutions, Bot-Agent Collaboration, Deep Intent Prediction and Vertical Expertise 7.ai, a global leader in intent-driven customer engagement solutions, announced that analyst firm Ovum has recognized the company as a leader in the report "Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting an Intelligent Virtual Assistant Solution, 2020–21." Ovum evaluated the 7 AIVA conversational AI platform against solutions from 10 other providers, and determined that 7.ai had one…

DRUID, a company specialized in developing intelligent virtual assistants (chatbots) for enterprise companies, has announced a strategic technology partnership with Vonage, a global business cloud communications leader that provides API solutions for messaging, chat, social media, video and voice apps. Through this partnership, DRUID's AI powered virtual assistants will be able to chat and respond through WhatsApp. The partnership between DRUID and Vonage was made possible due to the increasing demand for intelligent…

Everyone in the retail marketing sector seems to be talking about Voice search and Voice assistants, and yes, it has seen remarkable growth in the past few years. But a note of caution: the tech is still an emerging concept. It’s exciting and has enormous potential, but right now, are we really going to use this technology to buy our new iPhone, writing desk or wardrobe? There’s no question that we will – one day. What I’m less convinced about is whether there’s any first-mover advantage in adopting Voice right here,…

AI-powered capability lets people create a custom voice – their own, a loved one or a friend – for their mobility assistant Cerence Inc., AI for a world in motion, introduced My Car, My Voice, a revolutionary product that lets people create custom voices for their in-car assistants. Cerence’s voice clone technology is a game-changing innovation for the world of in-car voice assistants, which typically come with a set of pre-determined voice options. Now, with this new Cerence innovation, people can quickly and easily…

Despite the growing presence of deepfake voice fraud, Americans believe that they can to detect a CG-voice pretending to be a human voice.; Research by ID R&D published as biometric firm prepares to demo voice anti-spoofing solutions at CES  Despite the growing presence and impact of deepfake voice fraud, more than one-third of Americans were confident that they would be able to detect a computer-generated voice pretending to be a human voice (36%), according to new survey results released today by ID R&D. Just 30%…

What does Marmite sound like? Should its voice be as divisive as its taste? Do brands borrow a celebrity voice, and does the Voice change depending on the age, region, or even occupation of the people it’s speaking to? These questions probably don’t feature as part of your breakfast routine, but it’s more pertinent than you may think. This month marks five years since Amazon’s Alexa was born; it also marks the rapid rise of Voice-enabled brand interactions. Alexa has made Voice ubiquitous for consumers, and therefore,…