I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
Voice/AI news and notes: retail, automotive, real estate, healthcare, interoperability, fairness in AI data, and more
Will you raise me up?
Will you help me down?
Will you get me right out of this God-forsaken town?
Will you make it all a little less cold?
I can do that.
Now, I can do that.
RIP Jim Steinman
And, of course, the famous Dr. Pepper parody of the song (I won’t spoil it here):
A few news and notes for the end of the week from across voice/AI:
Blutag has released The Rise Of Voice Apps Within The Retail Industry, a new digital book available for download from their website.
It’s well put together, takes the reader from an introductory level into more intermediate and advanced concepts, and represents the company well as a sales primer. Any voice/AI company could learn something by downloading it and reading through it.
Earlier this week, Audioburst and Harman collaborated to launch the Ignite Store, allowing automotive OEMs to more easily provide access to preferred content.
Drivers and passengers can use Audioburst’s app to search for curated selections of content aggregated by topic, obviating the need to the driver to avert his or her gaze from the road. Another step in the march toward content (and voice-enabled content, specifically) being an order winner in the automotive sector.
Cyrano.ai is readying a tool that will bring conversational AI-driven insights to email communication, and have recently released a conversational AI tool specifically for real estate agents that help them have more fruitful and efficient interactions with clients.
The Open Voice Network has a Voice Agent Interoperability Workshop coming up in June, for which any company can propose a talk. This is done for the community at no charge to participants or participating companies by OVN.
Partnering with the Open Voice Network remains one of the best opportunities for native voice/AI companies, especially young ones that are pre-seed or series A companies, to differentiate themselves by showing vision and leadership on important future-facing topics.
In a relationship which had its genesis last January at Project Voice 2020, Constant Companion and Canary Speech are joining forces, utilizing Constant Companion’s unique scale with aging populations to deploy Canary Speech’s unique approach toward assessing vocal biomarkers to help identify various latent health conditions.
I’ll have more to say about Constant Companion in Monday’s This Week In Voice VIP, which will address voice in healthcare and the state of HIPAA compliance.
And finally, DefinedCrowd released an article earlier in April about preventing, detecting, and championing AI fairness. Worth reading.
In Detroit on May 13, or San Jose on May 20?
I’m coming to you for a pair of one-day Voice of the Car Summit events. These are invitation only and strictly in-person, available to executives in the automotive or tech sectors that are local to these cities.
Cerence is the Presenting Sponsor of both.
If you’d like to attend, respond to this email or contact me directly.
The registration discount for Project Voice X ends May 1.
After this date, there will not be any further registration discount. We’re already anticipating a packed house. Don’t sleep on it!
A lot of business was done last week at Project Voice 100, which had roughly 100 people registered. This major industry event in October will be a hotbed of activity, especially with M&A heating up right now to an extent we haven’t seen before.