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The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News Rundown - CES, GPTs, ChatGPT Team, Rabbit, Perplexity, and Much MoreWe highlighted 19 generative AI news stories from early January in the latest episode of GAIN. Watch the video discussion above or read the news through the links below. CES is the featured segment at the top, with some hits and misses but mostly misses. We also have news from OpenAI with two ChatGPT announcements. That is followed by news from Google, Poe, and a number of funding rounds. Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joined Bret Kinsella to break down the news. Generative AI News Featured CES Stories of the Week 🔦 Rabbit Laun...2024-02-0158 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News This Week - Cloud Wars and LLMs, NVIDIA Revenue, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Intuit, Zoom, OpenAI, and MoreWe return this week with the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for September 8, 2023. Get ready for a lot of product announcements and some special segments on NVIDIA and how cloud providers are influencing the competitive landscape: NVIDIA Blowout revenue - GPU purchases are upstream of generative AI software sales. NVIDIA just announced a record quarter that was nearly double the previous quarter and quarterly record. It also forecasted a new revenue quarter for the next quarter. We put into context how this will flow down into cloud and software revenue. Cloud Wars and LLMs - Wh...2023-09-2859 min
Room For GrowthUnpacking the AI Implementation Landscape feat. Voicebot.ai CEO Bret KinsellaPreparing for the future of AI is a top priority for startups and Fortune 500 companies alike. Where’s the best place to start? When it comes to brand messaging in digital marketing, how will AI impact the ‘era of authenticity’? How will increasingly ubiquitous AI chatbots affect customer engagement as they become another competitor for attention and information retrieval? Bret Kinsella, Founder, CEO, and Research Director of Voicebot.ai, explores these challenges and offers solutions to effectively leverage generative AI’s transformative potential. His insight on the future of AI takes cues from the lessons o...2023-09-1349 minThe Voicebot PodcastHour One CEO Oren Aharon is Leveraging Generative AI to Fuse Video with Virtual Human FeaturesOren Aharon is CEO and founder of Hour One, a leader in virtual human innovation, and a pioneer in generative AI. He joined Bret Kinsella to talk about how the technology behind virtual humans has evolved and the role generative AI is playing in the next set of features. Hour One's new Reals Activate technology can transform any video into a scripted virtual human experience. It will align mouth movements and sounds to match a script to the video of a person. This means any video of you or anyone else can be transformed into a virtual h...2023-09-011h 00The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News This Week - Is ChatGPT Dying? Generative AI Market Data, Meta Challenges OpenAI, ElevenLabs & MoreThe Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is back for August 24, 2023. Special segments this week include: What does the market data say about generative AI adoption? We look at 10 charts that explain a lot about what is happening, why it is happening, and where we are headed. Meta challenges OpenAI with an open-source automated speech recognition and translation system. Game on! Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Eric Schwartz, Voicebot.ai’s head writer, and Bret Kinsella gathered again this week to break down the top generative AI stories and a...2023-08-311h 00The Voicebot PodcastTelefonica and VUI Agency Talk about Generative and Conversational AI in the Contact CenterSarah Rojewski, Telefonica's manager of AI and automation in Germany, and Patrick Esslinger, co-founder of VUI Agency joined Bret Kinsella to talk about the evolution of conversational AI in the contact center and the introduction of generative AI. Rojewski even goes into detail about the latest generative AI project and how the company is looking at the technology. That is supplemented by a conversation about user experience and how AI technologies require new thinking and are accompanied by different customer expectations. Prior to her role leading AI inititiaves, Sarah Rojewski spent three years working on Telefonica's Aura v...2023-08-311h 11The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - GPT-4 LLM Moderation, CEO and Gen AI, Llama 2, Voiceflow, Anthropic, Pindrop & MoreIt’s time for the Generative AI News (GAIN) Rundown for August 17, 2023. Special segments this week include: Using GPT-4 to moderate LLM inputs The groups pressuring CEOs to adopt generative AI Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Voicebot.ai’s head writer, Eric Schwartz, joined Bret Kinsella this week to break down all of the top industry stories. Generative AI News Links related to the stories are included below if you want to go deeper into any topics. Top Stories of the Week...2023-08-311h 02The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - GPT-5 Rumors, G3PO from OpenAI, Generative Google Assistant, Inworld, Meta, and MoreEric Schwartz, the head writer at Voicebot.ai, joined Bret Kinsella to break down the top Generative AI News (GAIN) of the week. Generative AI News - Featured Stories this Week OpenAI rumors spread for GPT-5 and the open-source G3PO. Is this the response to Meta’s Llama 2? Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are both expected to add generative AI capabilities in 2023. Could this finally lead to the blending of doing and knowing assistants? Generative AI Funding Fountain Inworld raised another $50M+ to bring total funding to around $120 million a...2023-08-1855 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - A Lawyer's ChatGPT Debacle, Nvidia, OpenAI, Runway, TikTok, Spotify, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 328The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for June 1, 2023, is here. We have some special segments for you today with hosts Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella. These include: An Nvidia video demo of a humanlike conversation with an in-game non-player character Live demos of Bing search inside of ChatGPT and Google Bard’s similarity A short video showing how the Google Search Generative Experience beta release works. Eric and Bret also introduced a new segment, generative AI winners and losers of the week. I am sure you will find that t...2023-06-041h 05The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - AI Copilot for Lawyers Exclusive, ChatGPT App, Opera, Photoshop, Tesla and MoreYour Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 25, 2023, is here. Spellbook’s Scott Stevenson joined Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella (that’s me) to discuss the news and his company’s $10.9 million funding round. We have some exclusives for you if you want to hear the latest about the OpenAI GPT-powered lawyer copilot from Spellbook. These include the surprising number of lawyers that signed up in April and the enormous customer onboarding backlog. Plus, Spellbook is hiring aggressively right now. Generative AI News Beyond the live interview segment with Spellbook, we als...2023-05-301h 08The Voicebot PodcastGAIN Special - Microsoft Build 2023 Generative AI Announcements on ChatGPT, Copilots, Bing, and MoreMicrosoft Build 2023 was more hotly anticipated than Apple WWDC which is hard to believe. However, that is the new reality created by ChatGPT and OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft. In this special episode of the generative AI news rundown, (GAIN), Voicebot's Bret Kinsella and Eric Schwartz break down the five top announcements from the event and the implications for users and for the market. Topics include: Bing Search coming to ChatGPT Microsoft adopted ChatGPT Plugin model for Bing, GPT AI models on Azure, and for other applications Window AI Copilot is coming GitHub Copilot is adding an A...2023-05-3029 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News 15 - AI Virtual Girlfriend, OpenAI on Capitol Hill, Amazon, Anthropic, Meta, Zoom, and More - Voicebot Podcast 323Here is the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 18, 2023. Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella break down the biggest industry stories of the week. Some of those stories include OpenAI, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, Zoom, Gather, and an AI virtual girlfriend that went viral. - Has Alexa been generative AI all along? Amazon says so, sort of. But is it true? - Are we emerging from the AI Autopilot Era to the Copilot Era with more human control? Satya Nadella says so. But is it true? Links related to the...2023-05-201h 04The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - ChatGPT Plugins, Deep Floyd from Stability AI, Samsung, PwC, Deepfakes, Star Wars and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 320We have a breakdown of the week's top generative AI news stories and what they mean for the industry. Today's hosts are Bret Kinsella, Voicebot.ai's Eric Schwartz, and industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang. The top stories just this week in a generative AI galaxy that is very, very near include: Unleashing a Synthetic Force Wes Anderson’s Star Wars: In a galaxy not so far away, director Caleb Ward unleashed a one-minute cinematic masterpiece that sent millions of Twitter and YouTube users into a frenzy, dividing the fandom with the power of ironic humor. Aided by the f...2023-05-091h 04The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - New ChatGPT Features, HuggingChat, Google, Deepfakes, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 317The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 27, 2023, is here. Another week of breaking news has piled up, and we have a breakdown of the top stories and what they mean for the industry. The developments include news from ChatGPT, HuggingFace, Google, Nvidia, Sensory, Hour One, D-ID, deepfake musicians, and more. Your hosts today are Bret Kinsella and Voicebot.ai's Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: ChatGPT En Fuego Plugging in a new vision: Greg Brockman from OpenAI demonstrated some new ChatGPT plugin features; several are jaw-dropping. Th...2023-04-291h 00The Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - StableLM, Elon Musk, Drake Deepfake, and MoreThe Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 20, 2023, was recorded live at the Model Mania conference, which focused on enterprise generative AI solutions. News this week has more on Elon Musk and some surprising news from Stability AI. We also talk about a deepfake of Drake and The Weeknd that went viral, Adobe Firefly, Atlassian, ChatGPT in government legal actions, Universal Music lawsuits, and more. Bret Kinsella hosted this week with his Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: StableLM and Stable Diffusion XL 2023-04-2940 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - Charles Barkley Deepfake, Elon Musk, Hugging Face and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 315The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 13, 2023, included some breaking news on Amazon Bedrock, the new service competing directly with OpenAI and Microsoft’s Azure AI services. We also discussed Twitter’s generative AI ambitions, HuggingGPT, a positive generative AI launch from MailChimp and a lackluster implementation by Expedia, OpenAI’s bug bounty, the Italy ChatGPT saga, a deepfake of Charles Barkley, Alibab’s everything AI bot, and a bit more. Bret Kinsella (that’s me) hosted again this week with my Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include:...2023-04-2954 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News - ChatGPT Gets Banned, Deepfakes Get Provenance, Bing Chat Gets Ads, Meta, Canva & MoreThe Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 6, 2023, focused on regulators and OpenAI, ChatGPT’s popularity compared to the iPhone, deepfake disclosure, authentication and ownership, monetizing those generative AI models, what’s Meta doing, and more. Bret Kinsella (that’s me) hosts this week with guests Nina Schick, the author of the 2020 book Deepfakes, and Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: ChatGPT Gets Banned A time-out chair for OpenAI and some unfortunate users: Italy took action. Canada opened an investigation. France received complaints...2023-04-071h 01The Voicebot PodcastShould We Pause AI Research? Muddu Sudhakar and Bret Kinsella Break Down the Musk LetterThe Future of Life Institute, an organization funded by the Musk Foundation, issued a letter calling for a pause of "giant AI experiments" for six months. Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, AI legend Yoshua Bengio, and many thousands of others signed the letter. The idea behind the letter is that the risks posed by AI models such as GPT-4 are potentially so high that we must give policy-makers and technology leaders a chance to assess what guardrails are necessary. But is this a good idea? What are the risks of a pause? What are the objectives...2023-04-0745 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News Rundown - ChatGPT, Google Rumors, Elon Musk, Zoom, Coke and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 311The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 30, 2023, had controversy, competition, Coca-Cola, and more. Is there a more dynamic market right now than generative AI? I don’t think so. This week’s show is hosted by Bret Kinsella with guests Silke Hahn, technology editor at Heise Online, and Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Musk Wants to Slow Down AI The Letter: A letter from the Future of Life Institue signed by Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI founder Emad Most...2023-04-0555 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News Rundown 7 - Nvidia, Google, Midjourney, TikTok, Roblox, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 309The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 23, 2023, was packed with significant announcements. Bret Kinsella hosts this week along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Nvidia Moves up the Stack Picasso and NeMo: Nvidia isn’t going just to cash checks for GPU sales related to the generative AI tsunami. They now offer text-to-image and text-to-text models that compete directly with OpenAI, Google, and Stable Diffusion. Omniverse Upgrade: Omniverse is an open platform for 3D design collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulations. It announced new services for creating virtual...2023-03-2551 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News Rundown 6 - GPT-4, MS 365 Copilot, Google, South Park, and More - Voicebot Podcast 308The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 16, 2023, required some tough decisions. So much happened this week that we zeroed in on the biggest stories and how they will shape the market. We might get to some of the others, like Midjourney 5, next week. In this episode, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Generative AI for Knowledge Workers Microsoft 365 Copilot: A natural language assistant that is a system and not just a bunch of bolt-on LLM features. Can it live up to the ambition? It...2023-03-2044 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News Rundown 5 - Slack, Salesforce, OpenAI, Grammarly, AI21, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 307The top generative AI news (GAIN) of the week is back for March 9, 2023. This week, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and our guest, Brandon Kaplan, chief innovation officer at Journey, and the founder of Skilled Creative. Stories in generative AI land this week include: Enterprise apps all in on LLMs SlackGPT: A new ChatGPT feature for Slack developed by OpenAI Salesforce GPT: Einstein GPT features that Salesforce rolled out this week Grammarly GPT: Grammarly also adds generative AI features for its 30 million users, putting it on...2023-03-1044 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News Rundown 3 - Bing Boomerang, OpenAI Foundry, GitHub Copilot, Roblox and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 302Welcome to our third edition of GAIN, the generative AI news rundown. On tap today, we lead off with the Bing Boomerang. After some negative press about Bing Chat Mode going off the rails, Bing put some tight restrictions on usage to reduce the risk of generating inappropriate content. Then it reversed itself a few days later. OpenAI Foundry is a new set of tools for enterprise users, GitHub Copilot got an update with new code completion and info security features. In addition, we saw Huggingface partner with Amazon Web Services to host generative AI models and Roblox outlined a gen...2023-02-2733 minThe Voicebot PodcastGenerative AI News Rundown 2 - Bing's Wild Side, Bard Alert, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 300We had another big week in generative AI news. The testers of the new Bing Chat Mode made some disturbing discoveries, but Microsoft also made some changes and revealed a 71% approval rate by early users. Google is pulling out all of the stops to get Bard tested and ready for launch, while Jasper AI and Vertione introduced new generative AI enterprise solutions. And we had Opera and Yext provide new evidence that web browsing and SEO are about to change. Voicebot.ai's Bret and Kinsella, and Eric Schwartz break down the news, provide updates, and put the d...2023-02-1847 min
Humanitarian AI TodayBret Kinsella from Voicebot.ai and Synthedia on ChatGPTJoin Humanitarian AI Today as guest host Brent Phillips sits down with Bret Kinsella, founder of Voicebot.ai and Synthedia, to delve into the latest advancements in conversational AI and voice technology. Kinsella, a leading expert in the field, will discuss the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI and its potential to revolutionize the humanitarian aid sector. Learn about the capabilities of large language machine learning models for dialogue applications, and gain insights on the direction of this technology and the steps humanitarian organizations should take to adapt and incorporate these powerful tools in their operations by 2023. This podcast is a...2023-01-2534 min
Powerful Podcasting Stories#36: Not All Podcasts Need a Lot of Episodes - Bret KinsellaBret Kinsella is the founder and editor of Voicebot.ai, and I am the creator of the Voicebot podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs, innovators, industry leaders, engineers every week to bring out the stories that are driving the future of the Voice Ai industry. And he’s been doing this now for five years with over 260 episodes.
Bret’s advice is to understand what makes sense for your industry before starting your podcast, stay in touch with the audience, and last but not least, get to know the guest!
Special Links
Be a guest on t...2023-01-1312 minThe Voicebot PodcastShane Orlick President of Jasper AI on the Future of Writing and Generative AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 293Bret Kinsella wrote this: Jasper AI quietly built one of the top AI-based writing assistants atop OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model (LLM). Then, suddenly its growth and recognition exploded ... in a good way. That led to a $125 million series A funding round that was well-timed ahead of the new interest in the AI-writing assistant space after the introduction of ChatGPT. Shane Orlick is president of Jasper AI and walks through the company's origins, the product, and how customers use these tools today. He even mentions some product features that have not yet been announced (breaking n...2023-01-111h 05The Voicebot PodcastSynthetic Media Year in Review 2022 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 2912022 was the year of synthetic media. The mainstreaming of deepfakes and voice clones, along with the rise of text-to-image AI models, assured synthetic media of a breakout year. Then ChatGPT came along. It changed the conversation entirely and consumed news media and social media cycles for weeks. The GPT-3.5 model was better than expected, and the fine-tuning that delivered ChatGPT showed that large language models were ready to up end a lot of assumptions about what technology in general, and AI in particular, can do. Joining host Bret Kinsella to break down the top synthetic media news o...2022-12-291h 23The Voicebot PodcastZohaib Ahmed on Creating Andy Warhol's Voice CloneZohaib Ahmed joined us at the Synthedia synthetic media conference in September to discuss Resemble's work re-creating the voice of famed pop artist Andy Warhol. A Netflix documentary was under development that centered around Warhol's diaries. The creators thought it would be more impactful if the viewers could hear the ideas and experiences of Warhol in the artist's own voice. So, they began searching for a synthetic speech provider that could create a voice clone. Ahmed goes through the creation process and some of the challenges faced along the way. Plus there are a couple of nuances that you will f...2022-11-0824 minThe Voicebot PodcastGreg Cross from Soul Machines on Autonomous Digital HumansGreg Cross, CEO and co-founder of Soul Machines recently took to the stage at the Synthedia synthetic media conference with a discussion titled: "The Robots are Coming and We Need Them Now." His thesis that we are already living in the future because the events over the past two years have accelerated societal change is backed up by mounting data. One area that is greatly impacted is the accelerated need for automation and often it requires a digital brain to determine what types of digital services and interactions will best serve a custom. Enter autonomous digital people. G...2022-10-1330 minThe Voicebot PodcastAlexa Live 2022 Recap Show with Firstenburg, Tucker, and Schwartz - Voicebot Podcast Ep 265The Amazon Alexa Live event for 2022 introduced a couple of dozen new features for developers, new revenue-sharing agreements, and is ushering in a new era of simultaneous voice assistants. The Two Voice Devs, Allen Firstenberg (Google Assistant GDE) and Mark Tucker (Alexa Champion), along with Voicebot's Eric Schwartz and Bret Kinsella break down the announcements and sort through the type of impacts we can expect. 2022-07-261h 14The Voicebot PodcastThe Top Voice AI Stories of the First Have of 2022 with Special Guests - Voicebot Podcast 261Topics today include Amazon's new Astro Robot in operation, the rise of voice AI in the contact center, the increase in acquisitions and large funding rounds, custom branded assistants, Google's sunsetting of conversational actions, and a whole lot more. Speakers breaking down the news of 2022 so far: - Sarah Andrew Wilson - former CCO at Matchbox.io before Volley acquisition - Paul Sweeney - chief product officer at Webio - Eric Schwartz - head writer at Voicebot.ai - Bret Kinsella - founder of Voicebot.ai2022-07-021h 19The Voicebot PodcastVoice AI Predictions 2022 with 6 More Industry Leaders – Voicebot Podcast Ep 244Six industry leaders join with Voicebot's Bret Kinsella to discuss 2022 voice AI predictions, barriers to adoption, and top developments in the industry over the past two years. This is part two of our two-part series. Commentary from: Joao Alqueres, Iara Benjamin Brown, ConverseNow Pete Erickson, Modev Hannes Heikenheimo, Speechly Mike Zagorsek, SoundHound Dylan Zwick, Pulse Labs 2022-02-2546 minThe Voicebot PodcastVoice AI 2022 Predictions and Barriers Part 1 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 243Seven industry leaders join with Voicebot's Bret Kinsella to discuss 2022 voice AI predictions, barriers to adoption, and top developments in the industry over the past two years. Commentary from: Audrey Arbeeny Chithra Durgam Jason Fields Maarten Lens-FitzGerald Todd Mozer Patricia Scanlon Amy Stapleton 2022-02-1238 minThe Voicebot PodcastHealthcare Voice Assistant Trends and Data Deep DiveToday we break down key findings from the Healthcare Voice Assistant Consumer Adoption Report for 2022. The data includes 2019 - 2021 trends and analysis including market size, user adoption demographics, what patients want, and much more. This episode features Bret Kinsella breaking down the data and discussing the implications for the voice and healthcare industries. There is a companion to this episode released on YouTube where you can view the charts referenced in the show. 2022-01-2435 minThe Voicebot PodcastVoice Shopping Data Deep DiveToday's episode breaks down some of the key findings from the Voice Shopping Consumer Adoption Report for 2021. Data presented goes back to 2018 and shows a rising trend in adoption. Learn about total users, total consumer interest, product categories, average voice shopping order size, demographic data around users and much more. This episode features Bret Kinsella breaking down the data and discussing the implications for the voice and retail industries. There is a companion to this episode release on YouTube where you can view the charts referenced in the show. 2022-01-1929 min
The Speechly PodcastBret Kinsella Founder of Voicebot.ai on Key Trends from 2021 & What to Expect in 2022 with Voice Tech (Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats) - Ep. 18Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the next interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series. In this series you can expect interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences.
Today my guest is Bret Kinsella. Bret is the founder of the go to site...2022-01-031h 12The Voicebot PodcastTrends for Voice Assistant Use in the Car 2021Voice assistants are used across many devices and in many different contexts. The car is what we characterize as among the big 3 along with smart speakers and smartphones. These are the surfaces that have the largest voice assistant user bases both overall and in terms of active users. The recently published In-Car Voice Assistant Consumer Adoption Report for 2021 is the jumping-off point for today's discussion between Bret Kinsella and Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai. This report includes consumer adoption data from the U.S., UK, and Germany and includes consumer trend data going back to 2019. There is...2021-08-3042 min
Six Pixels of Separation PodcastSPOS #779 - Bret Kinsella On The State of Smart Audio, Clubhouse, Podcasting And BeyondWelcome to episode #779 of Six Pixels of Separation. Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation - Episode #779 - Host: Mitch Joel. You never know who you are going to meet and become friends with online. Going back to the early days of Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, Siri and beyond, the idea of apps (or skills, as they are called) for these interactive audio platforms has always interested me (so much so, that I was an investor in a voice skills company, and became interested in running it for a short period of time). At the forefront of...2021-06-1359 min
VUX WorldDoes voice first suck? And is it stuck? With Bret Kinsella, John Kelvie and Ahmed BouzidWhen I was on the Voicebot podcast, Bret asked me whether we're going through a voice first winter. I said that I didn't think so, nor did I really care. There are opportunities to do good work and enhance people's lives regardless. However, there has been an undercurrent in pockets of the industry where some folks are becoming frustrated that voice hasn't reached its potential (however you define that).Over the past few weeks, founder of WitLingo, Ahmed Bouzid was involved in a conversation at the popular VoiceLunchmeet where a participant stated that:‘Beyond the weath...2021-02-081h 16
Future Ear Radio050 - Bret Kinsella - The State of Voice Tech & What Comes NextGuest: Bret Kinsella, Founder and CEO of Voicebot.ai
Topic: The State of Voice Technology and What Comes Next
Bret joins Dave for the 50th episode of the podcast to break down the current state of voice technology, with a look toward what's on the horizon with conversational voice assistants.
The two talk through the following topics:
- The current phase of voice assistants: habituation & specialization - all the various ways that people are gradually building the habit of using voice assistants, along with the specialized voice assistants that are being bu...2020-11-121h 24The Voicebot PodcastIan Bicking Talks Firefox Voice and Observations About Assistants TodayIan Bicking spent 10 years at Mozilla as a software developer, engineering manager, and research engineer. His last project there was Firefox Voice, a custom voice assistant for the Firefox Browser. That experience led him to record his observations on the state of voice technology and conversational AI from a developer's perspective which he recorded in a 3,300-word blog post. Today, we discuss Bicking's 12-month journey building a custom voice assistant and what he learned. Before Mozilla, Bicking spent several years as a senior programmer at the Open Planning Project. He earned degrees in computer science and mathematics a...2020-09-061h 29The Voicebot PodcastRichard Weeks Head of Conversational Experiences at US BankRichard Weeks is head of conversational experiences at U.S. Bank. The company has an Alexa Skill, Google Action, chatbot, and a newly minted custom assistant now available through its mobile app. Today, we talk about what U.S. Bank has learned about voice and conversational user experiences and how that influenced the decision to launch a custom assistant. We also talk about his organization, the tech stack, objectives, and more. Richard has been with U.S. Bank for the past four years after nearly 23 years with Wells Fargo where he concluded his tenure as Senior Vice President for customer ex...2020-08-301h 09The Voicebot PodcastJeanine Heck VP of AI Products at ComcastJeanine Heck is vice president of AI product at Comcast, the top cable television provider in the U.S. with over 20 million subscribers for its Xfinity service. The company began shipping a voice-interactive TV remote app in 2013 and a voice-controlled physical remote for its cable boxes in 2015. In 2019, the Xfinity voice remote handled over 12 billion voice requests which suggests users are making an average of about 600 voice requests per year, up from about 200 three years ago. It is a heavily used custom assistant that has been proven at scale. Heck joined Comcast in 2007 and has overseen the X...2020-08-241h 04The Voicebot PodcastDor Skuler Co-Founder and CEO of Intuition Robotics - Voicebot Podcast Ep 163Dor Skuler is CEO and co-founder of Initiation Robotics. He is a former board director for ClearPath Networks, Senior Vice President at Alcatel-Lucent, and officer in the IDF. Intuition Robotics was formed in 2015 to reimagine the relationship between humans and machines. The company's first product, ElliQ, is an interactive smart speaker for elder adults. It can respond to requests or proactively engage with users, has a screen, and can move to offer the robotic equivalent of body language. The solution is in beta testing today and the company has been collecting user data before a commercial launch...2020-08-171h 30The Voicebot PodcastTop Voice AI Stories in the First Half of 2020 with Lau, Prescott and KönigThis week's roundtable discussion focuses on the top voice AI news from the first half of 2020. We, of course, talk about COVID-19 and how that is changing adoption patterns or the industry, smart speaker adoption figures, the voice app ecosystems and whether there is a voice app winter underway, and the rise of custom assistants, a shift to mobile and more. Guests this week include Theo Lau, founder of Unconventional Ventures, Katherine Prescott, founder of VoiceBrew, and Jan König, co-founder of Jovo. 2020-08-071h 12The Voicebot PodcastHarjinder Sandhu Founder and CEO of Saykara a Voice Assistant for DoctorsHarjinder Sandhu founded Saykara in 2015 but his journey into healthcare and voice began in 2000 when he founded Medremote which used speech recognition and machine learning to automate physician notes transcription for medical documentation. That company was eventually acquired by Nuance in 2006 and Sandhu stayed on as the healthcare group CTO until 2011. He then was a co-founder of a patient engagement platform called Twistle which is still operating today. But, the draw of voice technology advances led him to Saykara where he and his team are building a voice assistant for doctors and other clinicians. It's a great conversation about specialty a...2020-08-021h 16The Voicebot PodcastTodd Mozer CEO of Sensory Talks Custom AssistantsTodd Mozer is founder, Chairman, and CEO of Sensory. The company has provided voice and AI technology for 3 billion devices over 25 years. Sensory's technology stack can be used to deploy a custom assistant in an appliance or mobile app and also has individual features for wake word, biometric login, and more. Sensory customers include Amazon, AT&T, Garmin, Google, GoPro, Huawei, Motorola, and Sony to name a few. Todd is a graduate of Stanford Business School and UC Santa Barbara. He also studied computer science at UC Berkeley in between. 2020-07-271h 05The Voicebot PodcastPeter Durlach SVP of Healthcare Strategy at NuancePeter Durlach started out in Audiology technology in the 1980s and then quickly transitioned to speech technology in 1988 at Articulate Systems which was acquired by Lernout and Hauspie in 1999. He then moved on to lead Unveil Technologies, a pioneer in the contact center segment. Eventually, Durlach wound up at Nuance twice with a brief interlude at the hospital system UPMC. Today, Durlach leads Nuance's $1 billion healthcare business which includes solutions used by over 85% of radiologists and 65% of physicians that incorporate speech recognition, dictation, and custom assistants into their daily practice activities. In our conversation, we discuss Pete's three decades in th...2020-07-201h 10The Voicebot PodcastScott Stephenson CEO and Cofounder of DeepgramScott Stephenson is cofounder and CEO of Deepgram. He earned a PhD in particle physics at the University of Michigan with a focus on Machine Learning. He then spent time building a system designed to detect dark matter two miles underground. That experience inadvertently introduced Scott and a colleague to the limitations of speech recognition systems which to their surprise were not using the same deep learning architecture with hardware acceleration they had built to detect dark matter activity. It ultimately led to founding Deepgram in 2015 as a new model for automated speech recognition. The company added 12 million in funding i...2020-07-131h 13The Voicebot PodcastAlan Nichol CTO and Co-founder of RasaAlan Nichol co-founded Rasa in December 2016. Rasa began life as an open source NLU for chatbots and has expanded to other features, including voice interactivity. The company raised $13 million in venture funding in 2019 and came back about twelve months later with a $26 million funding round in 2020 after showing strong growth numbers in both open source downloads and new enterprise clients. Nichol is CTO at Rasa and before that was co-founder and CTO of a Techstars-backed productivity startup that had a conversational angle. He earned a PhD in Engineering from Cambridge with a machine learning focus. He also has a...2020-07-051h 10The Voicebot PodcastPunit Soni Founder and CEO of Suki the Voice Assistant for HealthcarePunit Soni is founder and CEO of Suki. The company provides a specialty voice assistant for doctors and other clinicians and he elaborates how its features go beyond the earlier technologies associated with medical dictation and transcription. The company was founded in 2017 and has raised more than $40 million since that time. Earlier, Punit was Chief Product Officer at Flipkart and Vice President of Product Management at Motorola while it was a division of Google. At Motorola, he oversaw the rollout of Moto X which was one of the first smartphones to include a voice assistant. He was also a Lead Pr...2020-06-281h 06The Voicebot PodcastMike Zagorsek of SoundHound Discusses What it Takes to Deploy a Custom Voice AssistantMike Zagorsek is vice president of product marketing at SoundHound. Prior to SoundHound, Zagorsek was head of product marketing at Square and Leap Motion, and before that was Director of Interactive at Apple. Way back in 1999, he was a Manager at Sapient where he helped companies enter the digital age much like he is now ushering them into the voice age. SoundHound is a leading white label solution for building custom voice assistants and has made news recently for powering Snapchat's new assistant. In today's interview, we discuss that implementation along with Pandora, Mercedes, and others. 2020-06-211h 12The Voicebot PodcastHey Swisscom Custom Voice Assistant Launch Journey with Riccardo Lopetrone and MIsha ZivkovicVoice at Swisscom began in 2015 with a voice interactive TV remote. The voice assistant Hey Swisscom emerged five years later in November 2019. Misha Zivkovic and Riccardo Lopetrone learned a lot in both versions of their voice-enabled products and they share the details behind the voice assistant in today's extended discussion. Do you think you could design and build a custom assistant in 9 months? Swisscom just did. We discuss their journey with voice, tech stack, objectives, and more. Misha Zivkovic is Program Manager for voice at Swisscom and Riccardo Lopetrone is Senior Product Manager for Voice, a role he began in 2015.2020-06-151h 23The Voicebot PodcastBBC Head of Voice and AI Andy Webb Discusses the Custom Voice Assistant BeebAndy Webb is head of product for voice and AI at BBC Worldwide as VP of Product Strategy. BBC has been a pioneer in supporting consumer assistants globally such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant. It is prominent in the UK but also provides skills and Actions in many other countries as well. It is also one of the most respected news organizations worldwide so Amazon and Google are incentivized to make sure BBC is available through there assistants. Last August, BBC announced it would create a new voice assistant of its own called Beeb. The organization is not abandoning Al...2020-06-071h 21The Voicebot PodcastAlan AI CEO Ramu Sunkara Talks Voice Assistants for Enterprise AppsMy guest today is Ramu Sunkara, co-founder and CEO of Alan AI. In 2014, Ramu co-founded a company called Synqq which was a voice assistant for meetings. Sometimes startups are for learning. Synqq educated Ramu and his co-founder that enterprises truly needed voice for enterprise apps. That led to the creation of Alan AI which has been his focus since 2017. Earlier in his career, Ramu was co-founder and CEO of Qik which was a video streaming solution for mobile and was acquired by Skype in 2011. Before that, he spent 11 years at Oracle, serving in, among other roles, vice president of e-Business su...2020-05-311h 05The Voicebot PodcastSpecialty and Custom Voice Assistant Design with VUI Agency's Esslinger, Hassan, and BaumeisterOver the past few weeks, I have brought in executives from three companies with specialty assistants that have shown early promise: Deutsche Telekom, Josh.ai, and Aider. Today, we take a different angle on this topic and focus specifically on the design of specialty assistants. And, we invited a crew that has worked on multiple specialty assistants over the past few years. My guests are Christophe Esslinger, Mohamed Hassan. and Dr. Barbara Baumeister all from VUI Agency in Germany. Christophe is Director of VUI Agency and a co-founder. He earned a PhD in economics from the University of Mannheim and la...2020-05-251h 06The Voicebot PodcastBrendan Roberts Founder and CEO of Aider Discusses Specialty Assistants for Small BusinessBrendan Roberts founded Aider in 2017 after more than 15 years helping small businesses with their communications and IT needs. Roberts hacked together a specialty voice assistant using off-the-shelf technologies in 2017 to prove that it could help address common problems faced by small businesses. He then launched Aider as a specialty assistant for small business managers more than a year ago in New Zealand and Australia and then in July expanded to North America. Aider helps small businesses by integrating with a variety of third-party solutions they already use today ranging from accounting to inventory and marketing. The assistant...2020-05-171h 13The Voicebot PodcastAlex Capecelatro CEO of Josh AI Talks Specialty Independent Assistants for the HomeAlex Capecelatro and his co-founder started Josh.ai in 2015 though the technology development preceded that by almost five years. Josh.ai is solely focused on creating assistant-enabled luxury home automation that supports both touch and voice interaction but Alex tells me it can go much further in the market as well. The company has its own smart speakers, its own assistant and enough momentum to recently raise $11 million from investors on top of an earlier round of $8 million. Alex previously was founder of Yeti which was acquired in 2015. Earlier in his career, he was a research scientist and earned a de...2020-05-101h 04The Voicebot PodcastReghu Thanumalayan of Deutsche Telekom Talks Hallo Magenta and Independent Voice AssistantsYou know about Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant. What about the German alternative from Deutsche Telekom, Hallo Magenta? You are going to learn a lot today from Reghu Thanumalayan, Innovation Lead for Deutsche Telekom’s Hallo Magenta Voice Assistant. He led the technology team that brought Magenta to market in 2019. Reghu shares insights about what Magenta does, how consumers are using the smart speaker today, the integration with Alexa, and even how it is enabling others to build their own enterprise assistants. We cover a lot of ground today. Before Telekom, Reghu was VP of software engineering at SAP fo...2020-05-031h 03The Voicebot PodcastRon Jaworski CEO of Trinity Audio on the Rise of Audio Content in the Voice EraAs we shift into an era of voice there is an open question about where we will get all that content required for audio responses to voice queries. Trinity Audio’s Ron Jaworski has a simple answer: convert millions of pages of website and other text content into audio instantly using text-to-speech. This is a really interesting and broader discussion than you might think. TTS on webpages is a gateway to several interesting integrations of voice with our visual digital world as it is today. Ron Jaworski is co-founder and CEO of Trinity Audio, a company determined in Ron’s words...2020-04-271h 08The Voicebot PodcastJeferson Valadares CEO of Doppio Games Talks Voice Interactive GamesMany people have been stuck inside for the past several weeks and some are trying out voice games to pass the time or just explore the latest developments in voice-interactive entertainment. Two games that have gotten a good deal of attention are The Vortex and the 3% Challenge, both from Doppio Games. These offer different examples of how to implement a game strategy on the leading voice platforms and serve as a jumping-off point for the conversation today with Jeferson Valadares, the co-founder and CEO of Doppio Games. We discuss these games in depth, how they differ creatively and from a bu...2020-04-201h 14The Voicebot PodcastVocalis Health CEO Tal Wenderow on Vocal Biomarkers, Healthcare, and CoronavirusTal Wanderow is CEO of Vocalis. He and host Bret Kinsella discuss the latest progress behind employing vocal biomarkers to evaluate health conditions and risks. We go into detail about the current work behind tools for diagnosing and monitoring COVID-19 patients. We even explore the ethics of what data patients should have a right to access. Vocalis Health is focused on using vocal biomarkers to identify the likelihood of hospitalization for a variety of conditions and have another product focused on respiratory disease detection and monitoring. Given that background, it’s not surprising that the company has ta...2020-04-131h 03The Voicebot PodcastVoice Assistant Adoption in the Car Data Review with Cerence CEO Sanjay DhawanThe topic today is voice assistant adoption in the car. It is rising quickly according to data from a recent report by Voicebot. My guest to discuss the trends behind drivers and voice is Sanjay Dhawan of Cerence, the spin-out of Nuance Automotive that since last October has been an independent publicly-traded company. Cerence has voice technology in over 300 million automobiles on the road today. So, Sanjay and his team have a lot of insight into where the industry has been, where it is now and where it’s headed. You have a couple of options to follow along with this...2020-04-0653 minThe Voicebot PodcastMeredith, Media, and Voice with Rachel ReedMeredith is a media powerhouse that reaches over 180 million people with some of the top brands in publishing including People Magazine, Allrecipes, Entertainment Weekly, Travel + Leisure, Food and Wine, Instyle, Real Simple, Southern Living, Better Homes and Gardens and dozens of other brands. In addition, Meredith operates 17 local television stations in 12 U.S. media markets. Meredith has invested in voice enabling several magazine titles and is expanding support for Amazon Alexa skills. In our conversation, we discuss Meredith’s Entertainment Weekly Alexa skill, the new Real Simple meditation skill, Allrecipes, corporate voice strategy, and more. My guest is Rachel Reed, Senior...2020-03-291h 07The Voicebot PodcastCoronavirus, Tech and Voice with Recode, CNET and Strategy AnalyticsPandemics have broad impact and the voice industry is no exception to the ripple effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Today's discussion focuses on the intersection of the tech and voice industries and the rise of coronavirus. Joining Bret Kinsella are three guests that are analyzing the coronavirus pandemic closely. Rani Molla is the lead data reporter for Recode and Vox where she writes about tech and how data sheds light on what is really going on. David Watkins is an expert in the global consumer electronics supply chain which includes coverage of many smart devices including smart s...2020-03-221h 12The Voicebot PodcastCoronavirus Impact on Voice Industry Events with Erickson and MetrockCoronavirus COVID-19 is now officially a global pandemic but it has been impacting events where the voice industry has a prominent role for nearly a month. MWC, HIMSS, SXSW all canceled. What other events are likely to face a similar fate? How is the industry already adjusting to new challenges associated with large gatherings? Peter Erickson and Bradley Metrock run the largest and most popular events in catering to the voice industry globally. Erickson has already had two events canceled due to coronavirus but has online events already on the calendar that are getting a lot of...2020-03-1253 minThe Voicebot PodcastMichal Stanislawek CEO of Utter One Shares His Journey on Voice Platforms with Media, Games, and MonetizationMichal Stanislawek has nearly 20 years of experience in broadcast and online media. He co-founded Utter One in 2019 and quickly launched one of the most popular games on Google Assistant in Poland. That along with another title launched in the fall of 2019 serve over 100k users per month. The team has also launched a media-oriented Alexa skill and has a new Bixby Capsule in certification. In addition to Utter One Michal is also head of product development at MediaATMOS supporting premium live broadcast video around the world. He was formerly vice president of broadcast platforms at Deluxe MediaCloud where he built an...2020-03-071h 07The Voicebot PodcastBen Sauer Talks Voice UX in Healthcare and Other Use CasesBen Sauer is a designer with deep experience as a practitioner, trainer, and theorist around conversational design. He recently left a role as a product and design leader at Babylon Health in the UK which has recently launched a chatbot that serves patients on behalf of the National Health Service. He has also been a trainer for O'Reilly events, is a frequent conference speaker, and has worked with BBC, Pearson, and Tesco in their conversational design initiatives. He has a degree in English Literature from the University of Warwick. We discuss conversational design in healthcare and for...2020-03-021h 07The Voicebot PodcastChris Sheldrick CEO of What3Words - Voicebot Podcast Ep 138What3Words is a global address system that has assigned three-word labels to all of the 57 million 3-meter squares that make up the surface of the earth. That approach enables you to go to the front door of house, the side door of an office building, the middle of city block, a specific tree in a park, or even a remote jungle location. It offers precision in space that is far superior to our postal address system and is more accessible than GPS coordinates. Chris Sheldrick, CEO and co-founder of What3Words, discusses the origin behind the s...2020-02-241h 04
The Artificial Podcast37: Bret Kinsella | Voicebot.ai and An Analysis of Voice TechBret Kinsella is the CEO and Founder of Voicebot.ai, the leading source of research, data, analysis, and news related to the voice and AI industries. Bret was named Commentator of The Year by the Alexa Conference in 2019 and both Voice AI Journalist of The Year and Commentator of The Year by Project Voice in 2020. He frequently keynotes at technology conferences in the U.S and Europe and has appeared as a guest columnist for Harvard Business Review, USA Today, and VentureBeat. Bret is also a practitioner in voice strategy and voice app design for Fortune 500 companies and has...2020-02-2359 min
The Jabra SoundbarBret KinsellaHave you ever heard the Gutenberg Press and the Amazon Echo mentioned in the same breath before? In this episode, Bret Kinsella explains how they have more in common than you’d think. The invention of the printing press signalled the end of a purely oral tradition and now, centuries later, voice technology is bringing it back - and also tearing us away from our screens. As the founder, CEO and research director of Voicebot.ai, Bret’s considered a global authority and the go-to spokesperson on voice assistants and AI. He’s also the host of the Vo...2020-02-1700 minThe Voicebot PodcastDavid Cannington Co-founder of Nuheara on Shaping the Hearables MarketDavid Cannington is co-founder of Nuheara, a pioneer in the hearables, wireless earbuds market. Nuheara was founded in 2015 in Perth, Australia and delivered its first product in 2017. The company recently announced a new generation product at CES, the IQ Buds Max. David and his co-founder previously worked together at Sensear which provided noise reduction gear for high noise manufacturing environments. 2020-02-161h 00The Voicebot PodcastVoice UX Today with Cathy Pearl of Google and Adva Levin from Pretzel LabsMy two guests today are widely sought after experts in voice user experience design. After more than 20 years designing voice user interfaces, Cathy Pearl is well known in the industry and is the author of what many people see as the key handbook for voice application design, "Designing Voice User Interfaces." Cathy currently serves as head of Conversation Design Outreach at Google. Prior to Google, Cathy was vice president of user experience at Sensely and before that worked at Nuance, Tellme, and Volio. She holds degrees in Computer Science and Cognitive Science and worked for NASA early in her career. Ad...2020-02-0957 minThe Voicebot PodcastVoice Assistants in Healthcare with Nate Treloar and Teri FisherToday, we have an in-depth discussion about voice technology adoption in healthcare, what some trials of new applications are showing, and where we are headed. Dr. Teri Fisher of VoiceFirst Health and the Alexa in Canada podcasts is currently a full-time Sports and Exercise Physician and clinical assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. In addition to his clinical medical practice, Dr. Fisher has become a leading authority on the intersection of healthcare and voice technology. Also with us is Nate Treloar, co-founder and chief operating officer of Orbita, a software company focused on brin...2020-02-0251 minThe Voicebot PodcastThe NFL and Voice with Ian Campbell and John GillilanThe National Football League (NFL) in the U.S. is the top sports league by revenue globally. It is also a media powerhouse that has been experimenting with voice assistant technology to enhance the fan experience. Joining Voicebot Podcast host Bret Kinsella today is Ian Campbell from NFL Labs, the innovation arm of the NFL. He has worked in product design, UX and innovation for the past two years in his second tour with the NFL. Earlier in his career, Ian was director of creative and UX for NFL.com and the various football and fantasy football mobile apps of t...2020-01-2654 minThe Voicebot PodcastMayo Clinic Discusses Voice Initiatives for HealthcareHealthcare will be a big adopter of voice technology and voice assistants. Mayo Clinic is out front innovating around new and intriguing use cases which we discuss in today's show. Dr. Sandhya Pruthi is a physician at Mayo Clinic focused on breast cancer treatment and research and a frequent speaker on voice technology. She is the current president and board of trustees member of the National Consortium of breast centers among several other industry recognitions. Joyce Even is Vice Chair of Global Business Solutions, Content Management and Delivery at Mayo Clinic where she oversees a variety of initiatives re...2020-01-2041 minThe Voicebot PodcastCES 2020 Interviews with Audioburst, Nuheara, NPR and MoreWe have 10 interviews from the floor of CES 2020 offering the latest insights on voice assistants, voice services, and what to expect over the next year. Gal Klein, CTO and co-founder of Audioburst (4:28) Audrey Arbeeney, founder and CEO of Audiobrain (11:50) Pat Higbie CEO and co-founder of XAPPmedia (22:01) Tobias Dengel CEO of WillowTree (28:30) Dr. Martyn Farrow, COO of Soapbox Labs (37:40) Nithya Thadani, CEO of RAIN (44:18) Joel Sucherman from NPR (52:46) David Cannington, co-founder of Nuheara (1:02:50) Jonathan Bradley, from Kohler (1:10:51) Robert Keating Safe-Tec (1:14:31) 2020-01-131h 19The Voicebot Podcast2020 Voice AI Predictions Part 2 on Voice App Architecture with Kelvie, McElreath and ReamAs promised, today I have part 2 of our 2020 predictions shows. Today, we take a deep dive into multiple conversations about voice app architecture. This is important because it determines how we develop for voice and what governs user experience. I have three guests today that will break down for you what they expect to change in 2020. John Kelvie from Bespoken joins us from Peru and marks a return to the podcast to talk about how "domains" will replace voice apps. He is followed by Tim McElreath from Discovery and Food Network who discusses his prediction about the "de-appification" of Alexa ski...2020-01-061h 01The Voicebot Podcast2020 Voice AI Predictions Part 1 with Ware, Bass, and Lens-FitzGeraldToday we have part 1 of a two-part series on 2020 predictions with guests from Australia, the UK, and Holland. I want to give a shoutout to all of the Voice Insider subscribers that offered their predictions for 2020. We had 46 of them in all and you can read the full story at Voicebot.ai. Today, I have 3 of them on the mic to elaborate on their predictions and we will have three more in the next episode. We start this week with the view from Asia and Australia from Matt Ware of First, a leading digital and voice agency. He has predictions abo...2020-01-0455 minThe Voicebot PodcastPatricia Scanlon CEO of Soapbox LabsPatricia Scanlon is CEO and founder of Soapbox Labs, the leader in automated speech recognition for kids. You may have observed a child attempting to use an Alexa or Google Assistant device and noticed the success rate of those interactions was noticeably lower than when you use it. A big part of that is due to the fact that the speech recognition models in leading voice assistants are tuned toward adult speech patterns, tone, and enunciation. Scanlon points out that children have shorter and thinner vocal cords and have often not learned how to enunciate properly. That means...2019-12-271h 14The Voicebot Podcast2019 Voice Year in Review with Jargon, Voxly, and Voicebot2019 started out with unbounded optimism around voice technology with rapid smart speaker adoption and Google announcing over 1 billion devices supported the Assistant. It continued with Microsoft pulling Cortana from consumer use case and Samsung adding new capabilities to Bixby while Amazon and Google rapidly expanded features. Then, we had the negative stories about contractors listening to voice assistant conversations and threats of new security vulnerabilities for smart speakers. The year is concluding with new products and continued robust sales of everything with a voice assistant. Milkana Brace, CEO of Jargon, Ravi Lal, CEO of Voxly Digital, and Eric Schwartz...2019-12-221h 02The Voicebot PodcastHearables and Voice with Dave Kemp and Andy BellaviaWhat are hearables? They are wireless earbuds and headphones that provide always-available voice assistant access. Think AirPods, Pixel Buds, Echo Buds, Galaxy buds. At home, you have an always-listening smart speaker but on the go having that just in your phone is a bit limiting. Connecting the voice assistant from a smartphone to your ears creates a more efficient and private interaction. Today we talk about the technology underlying hearables and why we aren’t getting 12-hour, all-day battery life. We also discuss applications, consumer adoption, and how the big players intend to compete. 2020 is going to see a lot more...2019-12-1659 minThe Voicebot PodcastThe Privacy and Security Episode with Molla, Mozer and Lens-FitzGeraldPrivacy and security issues associated with voice assistants have been the biggest stories in the industry so far in 2019. Joining host Bret Kinsella are Rani Molla, the lead data reporter for Recode, Todd Mozer, CEO of Sensory, and Martin Lens-FitzGerald of Open Voice and several other voice-related projects. Molla offers the media perspective, Mozer a 25 year veteran of the industry with in-depth knowledge of privacy and security issues offers some unique insights and Lens-FitzGerald tackles the questions from a European viewpoint. It's a holiday season discussion focused on whether consumers actually care about the intersection of voice assistants, privacy...2019-12-091h 00The Voicebot PodcastJeff McMahon Voicify CEO on Voice and the Martech StackJeff McMahon is CEO and co-founder of Voicify a voice app development platform designed for enterprise marketers. After a career in digital marketing as an agency founder, Jeff and his co-founders saw the need for voice app software that would integrate well with the existing marketing technology stack and be designed for how marketers perform their jobs. We talk about development, day-to-day use, and the many integrations enterprise marketers expect. In addition to his work at Voicify, Jeff is also managing partner of Martech Ventures and investment firm focused on marketing technology. Earlier in his career, he w...2019-12-011h 01The Voicebot PodcastTom Hewitson CEO of Labworks Shares 10 Hot Takes from 2.5 Years in VoiceTom Hewitson is CEO and founder of Labworks.io, a voice app studio in London known from some of the most popular games on Alexa such as Would You Rather, Trivia Hero, True or False and Mental Samurai hosted by actor Rob Lowe. In this week's episode, Tom offers 10 Hot Takes from 2.5 Years in voice based on his presentation at the All About Voice Conference in Munich. He touches on some controversial topics such as lack of discovery, how closed platforms like Alexa and Google Assistant stifle innovation, the lack of return on multimodal efforts, too much...2019-11-241h 28The Voicebot PodcastSamsung Bixby Developers from Home Advisor, Baby Stats, Dilli Labs, and VolleyFour independent developers discuss their experience building for Samsung Bixby and react to announcements from Samsung Developer Conference 2019, including Bixby Views, templates and working with the IDE. The interviews are conducted onsite at the San Jose Convention Center at SDC19. Host Bret Kinsella is joined by Cory Wixom of Baby Stats, Piyush Hari of Dilli Labs, Lei Xiang from Volley, and Ryan Weiss of Home Advisor. 2019-11-1739 minThe Voicebot PodcastThe ConverCon Interviews with SoundHound, Soapbox Labs, Algolia, and WebioThis week we have four interviews conducted onsite at ConverCon in Dublin in October 2019. First up is Katie McMahon, GM of SoundHound, a leading custom voice assistant development platform, and my guest on Episode #1 of the Voicebot Podcast. Next in line is Niamh Bushnell, chief communications officer of Soapbox Labs. Soapbox is a pioneer around speech recognition for children. Then we have Dustin Coates, the voice search lead at Algolia, a leader in enterprise search. We finish up with Mr. ConverCon himself, Paul Sweeney. He is a co-founder of Webio and is on the front lines launching conversational products for conta...2019-11-1157 minThe Voicebot PodcastLarry Heck CEO of Viv Labs and SVP at Samsung Talks Bixby and 30 Years in Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep 121Dr. Larry Heck is CEO of Viv Labs and a Senior Vice President at Samsung. In that role, he oversees all things Bixby. Prior to his work with Bixby, Larry served as head of Samsung’s Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Center. He has a deep background and distinguished career in both voice and AI technologies. Prior to Samsung, he was a Research Director at Google leading the Deep Dialogue project. Earlier in his career, he was chief scientist for Microsoft Speech, a Vice President of R&D at Nuance, and a Senior Research Engineer at SRI International. Larry earned hi...2019-11-0354 minThe Voicebot PodcastAmazon Alexa Product Launch Event Commentary from Amazon's Daniel Rausch, USA Today, The Spoon, CNET, and VoicebotAmazon held its annual Alexa product launch event in September 2019 and there were some expected announcements along with a few surprises. Hearables, smart glasses, smart home, Samuel L. Jackson, Alexa Auto and many more topics were covered in more than 80 announcements. Breaking it all down for you this week are Amazon VP of smart home Daniel Rausch, USA Today's Jefferson Graham, Chris Albrecht of The Spoon, and Ben Fox Rubin from CNET. Voicebot's Bret Kinsella also offers his "hot take" on the key themes of significance from the event. 2019-09-2947 minThe Voicebot PodcastDave Isbitski of Amazon Talks About the Early Days of AlexaDavid Isbitski joined the Alexa team in early 2015, shortly after the Amazon Echo launched and before Alexa Skills Kit or the skill store. When he started, it was all about developer office hours, slack groups, and meetups. Today, it is more often about conference keynotes and boardrooms. Bret Kinsella interviewed Dave at the Voice 19 Conference to get a sense about how things have changed over the past five years and what that means going forward for voice assistant adoption. Isbitski is currently chief evangelist for Alexa and before 2015 he held a similar role for the Amazon App...2019-08-1936 minThe Voicebot PodcastMarketer Adoption of Voice Apps as a Marketing ChannelVoicebot recently surveyed over 300 marketers to determine their enthusiasm and activity around voice assistants as a marketing channel. That report includes 20 charts and 30 pages of analysis and can be downloaded at no cost at voicebot.ai/research. In this episode, host Bret Kinsella is joined by David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices.com, and Ava Mutchler of Voicebot.ai for an in-depth discussion of the key findings. The discussion was originally recorded as a webinar and used a format that allows podcast listeners to follow along. How many marketers have launched voice apps? Which voice assistants do they f...2019-08-0355 minThe Voicebot PodcastVoice Summit 19 Onsite Interviews with Audioburst, AgVoice, Dabble Labs, XAPPmedia, Videmme, and NodesVoice Summit 19 was the largest gathering of voice industry professionals globally in 2019. Voicebot took the opportunity to speak with six industry leaders to get their perspective on the conference, where voice adoption has been and where it is headed. Host Bret Kinsella is joined by Amir Hirsh, CEO of Audioburst, Bruce Rase, CEO of AgVoice, Steven Tingiris, CEO of Dabble Labs, Pat Higbie, CEO of XAPPmedia, Guilio Caperdoni, head of innovation at Videmme Consulting, and Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, the global head of voice at Nodes Agency. 2019-07-2856 minThe Voicebot PodcastSmart Speaker Adoption Data for Australia with Matt Ware and Lachlan Pottenger of First and Ava MutchlerMatt Ware and Lachlan Pottenger of FIRST Digital in Australia join Ava Mutchler and Bret Kinsella to discuss the results of the 2019 Australia Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report. The adoption rate is fast, Google Home dominates, and smart speaker users employ the devices with more frequency than their American peers. The Australia experience is instructive for how smart speakers and voice assistants are seeing adoption in countries that have come online after the U.S. We talk use cases, differences with the U.S., and what consumers really care about. 2019-04-081h 08The Voicebot PodcastUS Smart Speaker Adoption Trends with Jeff McMahon, Jason Fields and Ava MutchlerThis episode is all about US smart speaker adoption data and trends and what it tells us about the future of voice assistant use worldwide. Jeff McMahon (CEO Voicify), Jason Fields (Chief Strategy Officer Voicify), and Ava Mutchler (Voicebot) join host Bret Kinsella discussing data from the recent 2019 U.S. Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report. Topics include the smart speaker rate of adoption, killer app use cases, device market share, changes from 2018, and voice app discovery challenges and solutions. 2019-03-171h 05The Voicebot PodcastCES 2019 - Eight Interviews with Voice InnovatorsCES 2019 officially kicks off today, but Voicebot already has eight interviews with a select group of voice innovators exhibiting at the conference this year. The Sunday before CES, 150 companies are selected to present their innovations to the media. Bret Kinsella and Ava Mutchler interviewed founders and executives at iFlytek, Woobo, Pillar Learning, Hi-Mirror, Moen, Flo, Mycroft, and Snips. We learn about voice translators, social robots, voice-interactive toys, voice in the bathroom, and independent voice platforms. It's a wide variety of voice software infrastructure and consumer applications. If you want to stay in touch with the story-behind-the-chaos that is CES...2019-01-0841 minThe Voicebot PodcastVoice Shopping Panel - Brian Colcord and Ryan MacInnis of Voysis plus Kinsella and MutchlerThis special episode is dedicated to voice commerce trends and data. In particular we discuss the results of the recently published Voice Shopping Consumer Adoption Report. Joining the panel are Brian Colcord and Ryan MacInnis from Voysis and my colleague Ava Mutchler from Voicebot.ai. Brian is VP of Design at Voysis, was previously a UX and design executive at LogMeIn and earned an MFA from the University of Hartford. Ryan is Marketing Director at Voysis and previously worked at Twitter, Acquia and the Boston Globe. Learn about how many people have shopped using voice, what they bought, what...2018-06-291h 03The Voicebot PodcastVoice AI First Half 2018 Review - All Star Panel with Tobias Goebel, Pat Higbie, Chris Messina, Ava Mutchler and Bret KinsellaThis week's episode focuses on voice AI events, products and news from the first half of 2018. We discuss Apple's announcements from WWDC and whether it was a big deal or a snoozer, the shift in smart speaker market share to Google, the impact of Google Duplex, what Amazon has done and should be doing and more. This week's guests are Tobias Goebel of Aspect Software, Pat Higbie of XAPPmedia, Chris Messina a developer and product guru best known for inventing the hashtag and Voicebot's Ava Mutchler and Bret Kinsella. We don't just talk about what has happened, we go...2018-06-111h 02
Voice in Canada PodcastVoiceBot.AI with Bret Kinsella #28In this episode, Teri welcomes Bret Kinsella, the editor and publisher of Voicebot.ai, the top news and commentary site on all things voice and A.I.Welcome Bret Kinsella!As someone who’s been working in technology since the mid 90’s, Bret has seen how the biggest technologies today, web, mobile and social, evolved. He founded Voicebot.ai in September 2016, after seeing the potential of voice-first technology in interactive voice ads.When he’s not speaking at one of the numerous conferences he’s invited to, Bret is hosting the Voicebot.ai podca...2018-05-2946 minThe Voicebot PodcastSmart Speaker Adoption Data Review, PullString and RAIN Weigh InVoicebot, PullString and RAIN collaborated on the Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report 2018. Today's special episode breaks down the findings and extends the discussion to offer additional perspectives. PullString COO Michael Fitzpatrick and Greg Hedges, vice president of emerging experiences for RAIN Agency, join Voicebot's Ava Mutchler and host Bret Kinsella in this week's panel discussion. Topics include: total U.S. user base, appeal for young and elderly consumers, U.S. device market share, use cases, voice commerce, direct-to-consumer opportunities and much more. 2018-03-181h 01