The Race for Voice Tech is On: A Fertile Ground for Startups – HAX

#News(IoTStack) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Also Read:

Workshop: Innovative AI Applications – Sound and Speech Analytics

Voice technology is fast becoming a part of everyday life. Whether you’re one of the 40 million U.S. households with a voice-activated assistant, like an Amazon Echo or Google Home, or one of the millions of smartphone users that power Siri’s 2bn daily commands, voice is on a fast-track to becoming a primary way in which we interact with the technology and devices around us.

Why should you pay attention? As Forbes put it:

“We’re at a turning point. The next phase of computing is a complete paradigm shift in how humans interact with technology: It’s dropping the screen and integrating AI-driven voice technology. If you’re an investor, this is an incredibly exciting moment—these opportunities do not happen often, and the market has yet to grasp this disruption’s consequences.”

And The Economist:

“This is a huge shift. Simple though it may seem, voice has the power to transform computing, by providing a natural means of interaction… Just as mobile phones were more than existing phones without wires, and cars were more than carriages without horses, so computers without screens and keyboards have the potential to be more useful, powerful and ubiquitous than people can imagine today.”

Fertile Ground for Voice Tech Innovation

While voice has become a race for large tech companies, it’s also become a fertile development ground for startups.

The opportunity has not gone unnoticed, either. Amazon’s Alexa Fund is providing up to $100 million in venture capital funding to fuel voice technology innovation for developers, device-makers, and companies. Google also announced in May it’s bolstering its efforts to support voice-powered startups.

But here’s the thing: there’s more to voice tech than having the ability to call for information or ask Alexa to play a track on Spotify.

There’s greater value at the heart of AI and natural-language processing (NLP) that will ultimately unlock abilities to decode conversational language and enable more enriching experiences based on contextual understanding.

Read More..