The Voicebot Podcast
Bret Kinsella
The Voicebot Podcast is about the intersection of voice and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. It is a weekly look at trends, founders and newsmakers and supplements the daily research, analysis and news found at https://voicebot.ai.
Generative AI News Rundown - A Deep Dive Into ChatGPT-4o, Gemini Upgrades and Intrigue & More
OpenAI introduced GPT-4o as a new model and the foundation for ChatGPT. The company also offered more than a dozen videos and other use case examples, which enabled us to break down many of the nuances enabled by the new model. Is this the voice assistant everyone always wanted? A day later, Google debuted its latest updates for Gemini and offered a preview of Project Astra, the upgraded future of Gemini assistant, which they say will turn it into an agent for users. Google provided just a coupl
Generative AI News Rundown - Shadow AI, Bedrock Studio, Mistralmentum, GitHub Copilot, Stack Overflow, Open AI & More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 380
Key stories in this episode include shadow AI arriving via employees, Meta’s secret generative AI strategy, and a new framework for entertainment applications powered by the technology. There are also six stories about big funding rounds and several products adding generative AI-powered features. Generative AI News Top Story of the Week 🔦 Employees Are Bringing Their Own AI to Work Regardless of Company Support Navigating Generative AI 🗺 Generative AI in Entertainment Framework and Lands
Generative AI News Rundown - LLM Palooza with Llama, Mistral, Phi & Grok, Plus New Funding, Adobe, Apple, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 379
Over two recent weeks a landslide of stories mostly revolved around large language models (LLM). Llama 3 was the biggest news, but the debut of new models by Microsoft, Mistral, and X.ai also pointed to a downstream impact. We also have a couple of nine-figure funding rounds, a nine-figure acquisition, and a new unicorn valuation is confirmed. Read the news through the links below and watch my discussion with Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai, in which we break it all down via the YouTube video above
Generative AI News Rundown - Google Talks Agents, Mistral Surprises, Elon Musk Raising Billions and Much More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 378
For you today, we have updates around Google Cloud Next, the LLM announcement gauntlet continues, new funding rounds, and text-to-music apps. This week’s news concludes with a discussion around the shortcomings of autoregressive large language models (LLM) and why the technology is unlikely to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI). Read the news through the links below and watch my discussion with Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai, in which we break it all down via the YouTube video above. Ge
Generative AI News Rundown - Debunking Myths, Plus Anthropic, X.ai, Databricks, OpenAI, and Much More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 377
We begin this week with three thematic discussions. Generative AI myths reviews the recent Stargate rumors and why journalists are so easily co-opted into publishing stories that may have a seed of truth shrouded in impractical, nonsensical claims. We also discuss three news items highlighting how generative AI is transforming the search market and the coalition of companies that want to displace NVIDIA from its generative AI throne. That is followed by an onslaught of news from the past two wee
Generative AI News Rundown - Pi-crosoft, Unusual Inflection, Google + Apple, GPT-5, Anthropic, Grok-1, and Much More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 376
We begin with an in-depth discussion of Microsoft’s not-quite acquisition of Inflection AI and the billion-dollar startup’s recent large language model (LLM), which appears to approach GPT-4-level performance. We carry on with the LLM roundup with a review of Grok-1’s open-source debut, Apple’s discussions with Google about using Gemini for the iPhone, GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 rumors, Perplexity’s rumored unicorn status, Together AI’s funding round and more. Of course, we also hit on NVIDIA’s Blackwell
Generative AI News Rundown - Gigantic Context Window, Gemma Open-Source, NVIDIA, Mistral, Klarna & More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 375
Google dominated the generative AI news earlier in 2024. The unexpected introduction of Gemini 1.5 is covered in depth, and guest host Allen Firstenberg discusses his first-hand experience testing the model. We also cover the Gemma open-source models and Google’s latest PR misstep related to its image generation. Also on tap are discussions around Mistral, NVIDIA, Adobe, Pindrop, and a few more. Generative AI News Top Stories of the Week 🔦 Google Goes Big on Context with Gemini 1.5 and Dips I
Deepfake Detection with Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan - Voicebot Podcast Ep 374
Vijay Balasubramaniyan is the CEO and co-founder of Pindrop. He first joined me on the podcast way back in 2019 for episode 86. I still recommend people listen to that episode. You will learn a lot about voice authentication. In 2021, Vijay returned for episode 193. We now have him three years later and the topic is new. Deepfakes and voice clones are common topics of discussion now, but Pindrop has been working on this for more than seven years. As a leading voice authentication solution, the
Joanna Czajka of Opera on Adding Generative AI to Web Browsing - Voicebot Podcast Ep 373
Joanna Czajka joined me to discuss how her team integrated OpenAI technology into the Opera browser to provide more value to users. She goes into the journey that started with rethinking the browsing experience and being midstream in that process when ChatGPT launched. That led to more rethinking of the experience and the introduction of several generative AI features.
Generative AI News Rundown - ChatGPT with Memory, Bard Becomes Gemini, Hugging Face, Frame Smartglasses & More - Voicebot Podcast 372
We have 16 generative AI news stories from the first two weeks in February. The evolution of assistants topped the news with ChatGPT, Gemini (aka Google Bard), and Hugging Chat. We break that down in depth and how memory and how generative AI personal assistants are attempting to fill in the gaps where their predecessors fell short. There is more funding news, and a number of new products from Slack, AirBnB, and Otter. We talk about smart glasses, a new product in the category that is not from A
Generative AI News Rundown - Taylor Swift + Biden Deepfakes, Azure Growth, Indian LLM, Yelp, Shopify, Etsy and More - Voicebot Podcast 371
Here are fifteen generative AI news stories from the past week. Links to the articles are below, or you can watch the GAIN Rundown via YouTube above. Deepfakes and momentum by Microsoft topped the news this week, while positive moves by Google may have gone unnoticed. Plus, we have another deep dive into new retail-oriented solutions, new funding rounds, and more. Generative AI News Top Stories of the Week 🔦 Sex and Politics: Deepfakes Make a Big Splash to Kick Off 2024 Microsoft Azure AI U
Generative AI News Rundown - ChatGPT Goes to College, The Government Investigates Gen AI, Google Faces Precarious Choices, and More - 370
We have sixteen generative AI news stories again for you this week on the Generative AI News Rundown (GAIN). Watch the video discussion above or click the links below to read the news. ChatGPT went to college this week as Arizona State University announced a partnership with OpenAI, while Washington State adopts new generative AI guidelines encouraging public school systems to “embrace AI.” Those two stories reflect a very different attitude from what the rise of generative AI faced in education
Generative AI News Rundown - Meta's GPU Hoard, ByteDance Models, Deceptive LLMs, Copilot, Google, 1X, and More - Ep 369
Sixteen generative AI news stories from the past weeks were on the agenda for this week’s edition of GAIN. You can watch the video discussion above or click the links below to read the news. Meta, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, ByteDance, Anthropic, Amazon, Walmart, McKinsey, 1x, Will.i.am, and more all had news this week. Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joined me to discuss the stories behind the news in generative AI. Generative AI News Top Stories of the Week 🔦 Meta to Buy 350k NVID
Generative AI News Rundown - CES, GPTs, ChatGPT Team, Rabbit, Perplexity, and Much More - Voicebot Podcast 368
We 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
Generative AI News - OpenAI's New Board Powers, Gemini v GPT-3 & 4, Copilot Music, Instagram, and More - Voicebot Podcast 367
Google once again made our featured story section with an independent benchmark performance analysis of the Gemini Pro LLM compared with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. We go into more depth about the benchmarks and how to interpret the results. Channel 1 says it’s positioned to change the news media with its virtual human avatar-delivered stories and Accenture did a lot of generative AI revenue. Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joined me to break down the news this week and offer additional contex
Generative AI News Highlights - Gemini, Grok, Mistral, Microsoft, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 366
Google ranks as our featured story section with the launch of the Gemini LLM and the new AI Studio. Mistral and Microsoft were other big newsmakers with the introduction of small LLMs this past week. And there is a lot on the new product and funding front, the EU AI Act, an OpenAI and news media tie-up, and a lot more. Generative AI News Featured Stories of the Week 🔦 Google's Gemini LLM Arrives Next Week and It May Just Outperform GPT-4 (sort of) Google Gemini Looks Amazing in Video Demos,
Generative AI News This Week - ChatGPT Turns 1, Anthropic's and Inflection's New Models, SoapBox Labs Acquired, Amazon Q & More - Voicebot Podcast 365
To say November closed with a flurry of generative AI news is a severe understatement. OpenAI almost melted down pulled it back together, and then we had a birthday for a little product called ChatGPT. Nearly every OpenAI competitor attempted to seize on the company’s turmoil and ramped up their visibility for sales, product announcements, or fundraising. Amazon released a slate of new announcements at the AWS re-invent conference. NVIDIA’s quarterly revenue looks like a vertical line. And that’
OpenAI Fallout Developer Panel - Voicebot Podcast 364
Today, we have a special episode that was recorded in the midst of the OpenAI management saga where CEO Sam Altman was fired and then hired back. While the management issues have been updated, I thought you might like a window into how developers were thinking about this incident and how the harm in reputation and relationships won't soon be resolved. Included in the panel are OpenAI developer ambassador Bram Adams, long-time OpenAI advocate and developer Bakz T. Future, GPT innovator Leslie P
Generative AI News - OpenAI Hegemony, Copilots Everywhere, Unity, Picsart, Symphony AI and More - Voicebot Podcast 363
This week continues the theme of market shift. Satya Nadella correctly aligned with the generative AI zeitgeist in focusing on practical applications of the technology. Individuals and companies have moved past bewilderment and wonder and now want to begin implementing and adopting solutions that offer tangible value. Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joined me this week to break down the news onslaught from Microsoft, more maneuvring from OpenAI, and a few other announcements. Generati
Developers GPTs Showcase Roundtable - Voicebot Podcast 362
GPTs enable users to create a custom ChatGPT experience for themselves and others. Developers gathered to discuss their early creations using OpenAI's latest innovation and wat they've learned.
Generative AI News - Grok, OpenAI Dev Day, GitHub Copilot, Aleph Alpha & More - Voicebot Podcast 361
Your Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is here. This week represents a market shift. OpenAI Dev Day is the biggest news, but Grok from x.ai/Twitter/X, GitHub Copilot, a big cyber attack, and other stories depict a rapidly shifting market. We saw shifts earlier this year, but many seemed reactionary or random. Today, everything seems much more intentional and grounded. Featured Stories of the Week 🔦 Grok is here - Elon Musk is making good on his promise to challenge OpenAI with the introductio
OpenAI Dev Day Rundown with Developer Panel - Voicebot Podcast 360
OpenAI Dev Day offered the industry a lot of new announcements and useful features. GPTs offer a no-code ChatGPT customization option for users, the Assistant API provides new features for developers, and GPT-4 Turbo is more capable and less expensive to use for chat use cases than 3.5, and maybe GPT-4 itself. If you would like a 12-point rundown of the OpenAI Dev Day announcements, check out this summary from Sythedia. Joining me this week are four developers that use the OpenAI APIs and have
Generative AI News - Deepfake Market Data, Biden AI Rules, Anthropic Gets $2B, LexisNexis, ChatGPT, RedPajama & More - Ep 359
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for November 3, 2023 is here. Just when we thought it might be a slow news week, it just pours in. Eighteen stories this week! Generative AI News Featured Stories of the Week 🔦 Deepfake consumer sentiment - Key findings from a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults shed new light on consumer awareness, experience, and concerns related to deepfakes and voice clones. New Report - Deepfake and Voice Clone Consumer Sentiment and Experience White House issues regul
Amazon Bedrock GM Talks Generative AI Model Choice, Titan LLM, and Customer Obsession - Voicebot Podcast 358
Atul Deo, general manager for Amazon Bedrock, the generative AI service from AWS, recently shared the company’s view on the industry, use cases, technology, and how Amazon is serving its customers. Thoughout the hour-long interview, Deo talked about his experience with machine learning in customer contact center applications, transcription services, natural language processing, and generative AI. He expands on the compay’s generative AI strategy as well as the technology architectures it suppor
Two Weeks of Generative AI News - SEO in Crisis, OpenAI Economics, Midjourney, Google, Baidu, NVIDIA & More - Voicebot Podcast 357
This week’s Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown covers two weeks of news. Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai and I jammed in 16 different news stories and a few other tidbits in this double roundup. Featured stories this week include: OpenAI Economics - OpenAI is generating a lot of revenue from ChatGPT Plus subscriptions and API usage by software providers. However, the popularity of Azure OpenAI Service is siphoning off many of those API customers as they move into production on Azure, which means l
Generative AI News - OpenAI Chips, Adobe and Canva Bring Generative AI to Design, Spotify, Opera, Observe, ElevenLabs & More - Voicebot Podcast 356
This week’s Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown focuses more on features and economics than foundation models. Featured stories this week include: Adobe and Canva show the marketers new tool sets - Adobe introduced a new list of features, upgraded Firefly models and a new text-to-vector-image model that will make manipulating AI generative images easier. Canva also extended its generative AI features as the too companies take different paths in rolling out generative AI. Generative AI Economic
Generative AI News This Week - Meta's AI Adventures, Bard on Assistant, MrBeast, Cohere, LinkedIn and More - Voicebot Podcast 355
Here is today’s Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown that kicks off a new month and a new quarter. It looks like October is going to be just as active as September. Featured stories this week include: Deepfake scams more frequent - Recent deepfakes of MrBeast and Tom Hanks highlight the proliferation of deepfake-fueled fraud and the lack of detection tools on social media (and elsewhere, for that matter). The assistants rise again - Bard is coming to Google Assistant, while Meta AI is a new ass
Generative AI News - Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, ChatGPT, Bard, and Many More - Voicebot Podcast 354
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown wrapping up an active September had more big stories than any other week of the month. The tech giants were out in force once again with news from Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI. Featured stories this week include: Amazon Goes Long on Anthropic, and Bedrock Gets a Boost - Amazon’s $4 billion investment in Anthropic is more evidence that, at one level, large language models (LLM) are just weapons for use in the cloud wars. It is designed to capture more cloud com
Generative AI News This Week - Alexa LLM, DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT, Mircosoft Copilot, Google Bard, Funding, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 353
We have another episode of the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown, which provides a live discussion of the week’s top industry news. This week, the tech giants were out in force with news from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and OpenAI. Featured stories this week include: Alexa Gets an LLM - Amazon has had a large language model (LLM) for years, but never let it out of the lab until ChatGPT changed the market seemingly overnight. Amazon has fully embraced LLMs at this point and started to in
Generative AI News This Week - NVIDIA GPU Performance Gains, Roblox and Salesforce Copilots, Jobs at Risk from Generative AI and More - Voicebot Podcast 352
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for September 14, 2023 is here. We are seeing another acceleration in the news cycle. Featured stories this week include: NVIDIA and the Chip Industry Rises - New GPU performance gains for existing H100 chips, the expected improvements from the GH200, and a revenue rise for the global semiconductor industry. Jobs at Risk From Generative AI - A Forrester study calls out some professions that will be most impacted by generative AI automation and will eithe
Soapbox Labs Founder and Ireland's AI Ambassador Patricia Scanlon - Voicebot Podcast Ep 351
Patricia Scanlon is the founder and executive chair of Soapbox Labs, the company behind the industry's leading automated speech recognition (ASR) for children. Scanlon has a PhD in speech recognition, signal processing, and machine learning from the University College Dublin, and previously was an adjunct lecturer at Trinity College and on the research staff of Nokia Bell Labs. She founded Soapbox Labs after recognizing that all leading ASRs were trained on adult speech data and showed poor resu
Generative AI News This Week - Cloud Wars and LLMs, NVIDIA Revenue, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Intuit, Zoom, OpenAI, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 350
We 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
Generative AI News This Week - Google Gets is Gen AI Mojo Back, ChatGPT Enterprise Debuts, New Big Funding Rounds, Products & More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 349
Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for August 31, 2023. Google may have dominated the headlines this week, but it was hardly alone. Special segments this week include: ChatGPT Enterprise - What was announced, where is it headed, and what are the implications? BTW, you may be interested in the Yammer go-to-market strategy reference as point 7 in the main article. We also put ChatGPT Enterprise in perspective alongside Google’s more ambitious play. Google Uses Cloud Next to Shift Generative AI
Hour One CEO Oren Aharon is Leveraging Generative AI to Fuse Video with Virtual Human Features - Voicebot Podcast Ep 348
Oren 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 anyo
Generative AI News This Week - Is ChatGPT Dying? Generative AI Market Data, Meta Challenges OpenAI, ElevenLabs & More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 347
The 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 gathere
Telefonica and VUI Agency Talk about Generative and Conversational AI in the Contact Center - Vociebot Podcast Ep 346
Sarah 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 di
Generative AI News - GPT-4 LLM Moderation, CEO and Gen AI, Llama 2, Voiceflow, Anthropic, Pindrop & More - Ep 345
It’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
Generative AI News - GPTBot Debut, Amazon's Gen AI Strategy, W&B Becomes a Unicorn, Tome, NVIDIA, Cohere, Zoom & More - Voicebot Podcast 344
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for August 11, 2023 is here. Special segments this week include: GPTBot and OpenAI’s plans to politely crawl the web, along with how most websites will react or should react Amazon’s generative AI strategy and how that will carve out unique positioning compared to OpenAI, Google, and others The significance of Alexa’s top exec shifting to generative AI Generative AI winners and losers of the week. My Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz and I were j
Generative AI News - GPT-5 Rumors, G3PO from OpenAI, Generative Google Assistant, Inworld, Meta, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 343
Eric 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 anot
Generative AI News - New ChatGPT Features, Identifying AI Text, Perplexity, Grammarly, and More - Voicebot Podcast 342
Eric Schwartz, the head writer at Voicebot.ai, was joined by GAIN producer and Synthedia researcher Andrew Herndon. Generative AI News - Featured Stories of the Week OpenAI introduces Custom Instructions to add personalization to ChatGPT. OpenAI removed its Text Classifier that was supposed to identify whether content was AI-written because it didn’t work. Of course, Turnitin and others still say they can spot AI-written text, but provides no evidence to back up the claims. Synthedia was the
Conversational AI Innovators at Project Voice 2023 with Lilypad, Dexer, ConverseNow, Speechly, CDI, and Calen - Voicebot Podcast Ep 341
Project Voice gathered again in Chattanooga, Tennessee in April 2023. I had the opportunity to interview several innovative companies while on site. 2:16 - LilyPad AI, Genady Knizhnik - Conversational AI for English language learning 11:09 - Conversation Design Institute, Hans Van Dam - Conversation design evolution 23:11 - Speechly, Collin Borns - Speech recognition tools to combat voice chat toxicity 31:00 - ConverseNow, Ben Brown - Conversational AI for restaurants 42:51 - Calen, Irakli Bes
Generative AI News - Llama 2 Shakes up LLM Market, GPT-4 May Not Be Degrading, Apple GPT, Wix, AP, AI21, SAP, and More - Voicebot Podcast 340
Here is the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for July 20, 2023. Special segments this week include: Meta launches Llama 2, making it open source and free for commercial use. We talk about the implications for the LLM market. Did GPT-4’s performance really degrade, as has been reported? We look at the research paper results, evaluate the methodology and consider a rebuttal. We also cover the generative AI winners and losers of the week. My Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz joined me th
Generative AI News - ChatGPT's Usage Stats, Anthropic's Claude, Lots of Funding Rounds, Deepfakes and New Products - Voicebot Podcast 339
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is back and was recorded on July 13, 2023. Special segments this week include: Anthropic’s ChatGPT competitor Claude 2 landed, and it has some intriguing features. The discussion also includes a quick demo. Is ChatGPT’s website traffic drop a reason for concern? We break down the numbers and also touch on a brand new FTC action against OpenAI. We also give you a new list of generative AI winners and losers of the week. My Voicebot.ai colleague Eric S
The Evolution of Conversation Design in the ChatGPT Era Part 2 - Voicebot Podcast 338
How are ChatGPT and the rise of large language models impacting conversation designs and designers? Today, in Part 2 of our series on conversation design, we have four more experts weighing in on how the profession is changing and what designers should consider and do about it. Joining me today in a series of one-on-one interviews are: Maaike Coppens is vice president of product at OpenDialog AI, where she started as head of UX and conversation design in 2020. She was a product designer at XAPP
Generative AI News - Busting AI Myths, Giant Funding Rounds, AI in Education and Media, and More - Voicebot Podcast 337
Host notes - My apologies about the audio quality. We recorded on the road, and the mic setup didn't work as planned. The YouTube video audio is a little bit stronger if you want to watch this week. Also, the conversation and guest commentary is very good, so I wanted to put it out there anyway. In particular, I think you will like the discussion around LLMs and Theory of Mind, generative AI in education, and the potential erosion of generative AI startup valuations. The Generative AI News (GA
The Evolution of Conversation Design in the ChatGPT Era Part 1 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 336
How are ChatGPT and the rise of large language models impacting conversation designs and designers? Today, in Part 1 of our series on conversation design, we have four experts in the field weighing in on how the profession is changing and what designers should be thinking about. Joining me today in a series of one-on-one interviews are: Maaike Groenewege is an independent conversation designer and the creator of Convocat. She is currently the conversation design lead, prompt engineer, and NLU t
Generative AI News - AI Search Metrics, Market Growth Data, Marvel, Oracle, Amazon, Inflection & More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 335
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown this week was recorded on June 29, 2023. Some special segments include: Generative AI search metrics compare wait time and word production per answer for Bing Chat, Perplexity, and Google SGE. The venture capital and acquisition funding fountain flowed again with a giant acquisition, financing rounds for CalypsoAI, Loora, and investment by Amazon and the UK’s NHS. We also give you a new list of generative AI winners and losers of the week. Generative
Voicemod CEO Jaime Bosch on Voice Changers, Audio Expression, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 334
Voicemod is a pioneer in audio expression. The company is best known for its real-time voice changer technologies that are popular in the gamer communities, where users can sound like a cartoon character, a movie actor, another gender, or anything you can imagine. The product's capabilities and popularity extends to other use cases as well, including use for recorded speech, sound bed generation, and more. Jaime Bosch is CEO and co-founder of Voicemod, founded in 2014. Voicemod raised $14 milli
Generative AI News - EU AI Act, LLM Regulation, Vimeo, Mercedes, Funding Rounds and More - Voicebot Podcast 333
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is back and was recorded on June 22, 2023. Some special segments this week include: The New EU AI Act and how large language models (LLM) face a big risk of non-compliance and steep fines. A new analysis breaks it down for 10 LLMs. The venture capital money fountain flowed with big funding rounds for Mistral, Synthesia, and ElevenLabs. Eric and I also bring you generative AI winners and losers of the week. Generative AI News Links related to the to
Rembrand CEO Omar Tawakol on Generative AI and Product Placement in Videos - Voicebot Podcast 332
Omar Tawakol is CEO and co-founder Rembrand, a company using generative AI to automate product placement in online videos. Earlier this year, he announced an $8 million seed funding round and this month added several more strategic investors. Rembrand represents a return to Tawakol's roots in advertising technology and his graduate work in AI. He saw there was an underutilized opportunity for product placement at scale that could be delivered cost-effectively for online influencers. AI is enabli
Generative AI News - OpenAI Cuts Prices, Google's AI Model Garden, Salesforce AI Fund, Generative Search & More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 331
We have another Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for you today. It was recorded on June 16, 2023. Some special segments this week include: OpenAI’s function calling, expanded context window, and price cuts Generative AI search, brands, latency, and features that matter Eric, special guest Michal Stanislawek, and I also go through the generative AI winners and losers of the week. That has been a fun addition to the show. Generative AI News (GAIN) Links related to the top stories in today
Generative AI News 18 - Apple's VR Bet and Lack of Generative AI. OpenAI, Google, Jasper, Instacart, and More! - Voicebot Podcast Ep 330
The latest Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is live and was recorded on June 8, 2023. Some special segments this week include: Apple’s Vision Pro opts for gestures over voice commands, and generative AI is nowhere to be found. OpenAI and Google both reveal better generative AI reasoning skills for chatbots, and Google may be in the lead! We break down two very different approaches to make large language models (LLM) better at math, science, and complex thinking. Eric and I also have the g
Aleksandr Tiulkanov on AI Policy, Laws, Regulation, and What We Really Need from Government - Voicebot Podcast 329
Aleksandr Tuilkanov is a lawyer specializing in AI policy, regulation, and legal frameworks. Early work in GDPR and AI regulation before the generative AI frenzy led him to be hired by several governments to help draft AI policy. Few people that have focused on AI policy exclusively or a significant period of time, and his insights are grounded in that experience. His work was influential at the Council of Europe, a key player in the latest EU AI regulatory framework. We talk about imitation vs
Generative AI News - A Lawyer's ChatGPT Debacle, Nvidia, OpenAI, Runway, TikTok, Spotify, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 328
The 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 win
Robert Scoble on Apple, Siri, ChatGPT, Virtual Companions, AR/VR, and a Lifetime in Silicon Valley - Voicebot Podcast Ep 327
Robert Scoble did the first live stream of a ride in a Tesla. The driver was Elon Musk. The Siri mobile app launched to the world in his living room. He is the leading author on spatial computing, is an AR/VR expert, and has seen a lot of technology innovation up close over the years. He and I caught up at Project Voice in April for a live interview right after he interviewed the three Siri co-founders onstage. In addition to his comments on the evolution of tech and Silicon Valley over the pa
Generative AI News - AI Copilot for Lawyers Exclusive, ChatGPT App, Opera, Photoshop, Tesla and More - Voicebot Podcast 326
Your 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 aggre
GAIN Special - Microsoft Build 2023 Generative AI Announcements on ChatGPT, Copilots, Bing, and More - Voicebot Podcast 325
Microsoft 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
Adam Cheyer Co-founder of Siri and Viv Labs on Assistants, AI, and ChatGPT - Voicebot Podcast Ep 324
My guest today is a giant in the world of voice assistants and AI. Adam Cheyer is the co-founder of Siri, which was originally an app that, as you know, was acquired by Apple and launched as the key feature of the iPhone 4s in 2011. That is how Siri came to define expectations for modern-day voice assistants. However, Cheyer and one of his Siri cofounders Dag Kittlaus, were disappointed that Apple decided to dramatically narrow the scope of the assistant to better align with its goal of making
Generative AI News 15 - AI Virtual Girlfriend, OpenAI on Capitol Hill, Amazon, Anthropic, Meta, Zoom, and More - Voicebot Podcast 323
Here 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
Generative AI News - Google Bard and Other IO Announcements, Bing Chat, The White House, Wendy's, and More - Voicebot Podcast 322
The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 11, 2023, is here. Special guest and Google Developer Expert (GDE) Allen Firstenberg joined me to go in-depth on all the Google I/O stories. We discuss Bard, extensions, conversational search, the PaLM and Gemini models, and much more. We also review the “Google Has No [generative AI] Moat” memo. That is followed by a discussion of Wendy’s adoption of Google PaLM for drive-thru order taking, Bing Chat going general availability worldwide, the White H
Dag Kittlaus CEO of Riva Health and Co-founder of Siri and Viv Labs - Voicebot Podcast Ep 321
Dag Kittlaus is the CEO and co-founder of Riva Health, a company that has set out to revolutionize how patients manage hypertension and heart disease. We discuss the innovation behind Riva, which turns a smartphone into a health management assistant that collects data and connects patients with a proactive care team. Hearing Dag talk, you can see how this might extend into traditional assistant functionality for managing chronic heart conditions. He breaks down the Riva journey thus far and we g
Generative AI News - ChatGPT Plugins, Deep Floyd from Stability AI, Samsung, PwC, Deepfakes, Star Wars and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 320
We 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 f
Lee Mallon on Recreating Trip Advisor with ChatGPT and DALL-E for $53 and Other Adventures - Voicebot Podcast Ep 319
Lee Mallon is a CTO, developer, and technical advisor for AI and complex software projects. He created a hotel brand and brochure with his daughter using generative AI in just 7 hours. That project inspired him to see how quickly he could recreate a Trip Advisor for family travel activities website using generative AI. It took him two days and cost $53 to publish a website with over 2k activities, 2.6k images, and nearly 250k words. Learn how Lee did this, some tips, and what he sees next for au
AI at Mobile World Congress - D-ID, SK Telecom, MyManu, and VUI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 318
Mobile World Congress 2023 had a lot of AI solutions on display. D-ID's Yaniv Levy talked about a new streaming API for its virtual human solution paving the way for real-time and dynamic interactive digital people. Don't miss the second segment with SK Telecom's Youngsup Shin. It is about A., (that's pronounced A [dot]), a virtual assistant that is also a personal companion. A. has 1 million users in its beta period, is based on a large language model (LLM), and has some features similar to Ch
Generative AI News - New ChatGPT Features, HuggingChat, Google, Deepfakes, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 317
The 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 Brockm
Generative AI News - StableLM, Elon Musk, Drake Deepfake, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 316
The 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 stor
Generative AI News - Charles Barkley Deepfake, Elon Musk, Hugging Face and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 315
The 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 agai
Nico Perony Director of AI Research at Unity - Voicebot Podcast Ep 314
Nico Perony is the director of AI research at the game development platform Unity. He was a co-founder and CTO of OTO, which was acquired by Unity in 2021. OTO was a pioneer in emotional intelligence for conversation data. It was known for "Enabling emotional intelligence everywhere, so human and artificial intelligence can interact with awareness and empathy." Perony led the integration of OTO technology into the Unity platform and, more recently, has focused on new conversation AI features and
Generative AI News - ChatGPT Gets Banned, Deepfakes Get Provenance, Bing Chat Gets Ads, Meta, Canva & More - Voicebot Podcast 313
The 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 ch
Should We Pause AI Research? Muddu Sudhakar and Bret Kinsella Break Down the Musk Letter - Voicebot Podcast Ep 312
The 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 ide
Generative AI News Rundown - ChatGPT, Google Rumors, Elon Musk, Zoom, Coke and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 311
The 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, A
Reghu Thanumalayan from Deutsche Telekom Talks Magenta and the Future of Voice Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 310
Reghu Thanumalayan is a senior vice president at Deutsche Telekom and oversees the Magenta voice assistant. He was my featured guest in Voicebot Podcast Ep 148 three years ago. Reghu joined me to share an update on how things have evolved since launching the product in late 2019. Magenta has won awards, expanded integrations with TV and smart home devices, and introduced a new call center application. However, the company has also discontinued the smart speaker and learned some tough lessons. R
Generative AI News Rundown 7 - Nvidia, Google, Midjourney, TikTok, Roblox, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 309
The 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
Generative AI News Rundown 6 - GPT-4, MS 365 Copilot, Google, South Park, and More - Voicebot Podcast 308
The 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
Generative AI News Rundown 5 - Slack, Salesforce, OpenAI, Grammarly, AI21, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 307
The 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 a
Generative AI News Rundown 4 - OpenAI ChatGPT API, Snapchat, Spotify, Meta LLaMA, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 306
If you want to get caught up on the top generative AI news of the week, Eric Schwartz and Andrew Herndon from Voicebot.ai and Synthedia break down the top headlines for the first week in March 2023. On tap this week in the video (with links if you want to read more): ChatGPT API Snap My AI Spotify AI DJ New Bing in Windows 11 Meta joins the LLM wars…sort of More About GAIN The Generative AI News (GAIN) Rundown is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon EST
Eric Schwartz from Voicebot Compares Large Language Model Performance - Voicebot Podcast Ep 305
Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai, joins me today to talk about some of his key learnings from a recent set of tests he conducted with ten different large language model based writing assistants. In particular, he will break down what the market looks like today in terms of the LLM suppliers and how the AI writing assistants compare across several use cases. In this interview, he compares AI21 Labs, ChatGPT, and GPT-3 models. This interview was originally recorded at the Synthedia 2 e
Marc Scarpa CEO of DeFiance Media Talks About Launched the First Digital Human News Anchor - Voicebot Podcast Ep 304
DeFiance Media is a video news platform that provides coverage of decentralized culture, technology, and finance. It was founded by CEO, Marc Scarpa in 2021. Scarpa is well known as an innovator in participatory broadcasts. He was the founder of JumpCut in the 1990s which was known for producing Woodstock 99, three of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, and Artisan Entertainment's Blair Witch WebFestival. Earlier in his career, he was the New York Bureau Chief for CNET TV. He also worked for YouTube
Bakz T. Future Breaks Down the Past Present and Future of ChatGPT and OpenAI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 303
In today's interview, Bakz T. Future walks through the history of OpenAI, where recent developments behind ChatGPT originated, the rise of DALL-E, image generators, and other generative AI technologies. Bakz because is both an everyday user of these technologies as well as a developer that works directly with the OpenAI APIs, so you are going to learn a lot today. Get ready for a discussion about InstructGPT and how that upgrade in February 2022 was instrumental to all of the recent mania aro
Generative AI News Rundown 3 - Bing Boomerang, OpenAI Foundry, GitHub Copilot, Roblox and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 302
Welcome 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 Hugging
Chandra Khatri CTO of Got-It AI on Automated Truth Checking and Generative AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 301
Chandra Khatri is CTO and co-founder of Got-It AI, a company that built an AI that builds conversational AI solutions. It can ingest existing conversation data and automatically generate an intent model and conversation flows that designers can edit in a no-code platform. That same technology was more recently applied to checking the output of GPT-3. Known as CheckGPT or Truth Checker, it verifies the truthfulness of large language model outputs, one of the key concerns of enterprise users of ge
Generative AI News Rundown 2 - Bing's Wild Side, Bard Alert, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 300
We 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 Eri
Andrei Papancea CEO of NLX on Conversational Experiences, Customer Self-Service, and GPT-3 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 299
Andrei Papancea co-founded NLX in 2018 to solve some of the problems he faced as a software engineer working on natural language understanding at American Express. He worked extensively with designers and analysts that could not make improvements to customer self-service and conversational support channels without engaging software engineers to hardcode the changes. He was confident that you could build conversational systems that enabled non-technical users to make these changes. In addition,
Generative AI News Rundown with Bing, Bard, Deepfakes, OpenAI Data and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 298
A lot happened this week in the generative AI and synthetic media. Today introduces a new weekly (or when appropriate) addition to the Voicebot Podcast. The GAIN Rundown is the generative AI news of the week. So much is happening in this space and it is so important to the conversational AI industry, we thought that a short weekly rundown of the top headlines would be useful. Let us know what you think. The big news for this episode was Google's ChatGPT competitor Bard and Microsoft's debut of
Karen Kaushansky Conversation Designer at Google Talks UX for Wearables, LLMs, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 297
Karen Kaushansky is a conversation designer at Google that led the Google Assistant UX design for WearOS and, more recently, for the Pixel Watch. While there has been a lot of attention around conversational UX on smart speakers and mobile phones, wearables introduce new variables and different mental models. Kaushansky goes into detail about designing voice experiences for the watch, what it's like to be an API or embedded in the software, how it's different when you also control the hardware o
Gil Perry CEO of D-ID on Lifelike Digital People, Generative AI, and the Rise of Synthetic Media - Voicebot Podcast Ep 296
My guest is D-ID co-founder and CEO Gil Perry. We talk about how the company logically evolved into tools for creating talking digital people and how its capabilities in GANs and protecting consumers from facial recognition technology were the ingredients for a unique AI-based video solution. The company is well known for powering MyHeritage's Deep Nostalgia product, which has animated over 100 million photographs for consumers. D-ID was also instrumental in helping Jean-Baptiste Martinoli win t
Dustin Coates from Algolia Breaks Down Keyword, Concept, and Conversational Search Models - Voicebot Podcast Ep 295
The launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, spurred new interest in conversational search. For the first time in over a decade, many people are beginning to think about what comes after the Google search model that has become so familiar. Dustin Coates knows a lot about search. He is the principal product manager the implemented Algolia's voice search products and worked on the integration with OpenAI's GPT-3 in 2021. Algolia is a search giant in its own right, with over 17,000 customers using
Ori Goshen CEO of AI21 Labs on WordTune, the Large Language Model Revolution, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 294
"The adoption of large language models and generative AI is booming, and I think it began with creativity use cases. And now we are seeing as it slowly moving toward productivity use cases.... and that's is going to be the most valuable trend over the next couple of years," says AI21 Labs CEO Ori Goshen. AI21 Labs is known for developing a large language model and using it to develop products such as Wordtune and Wordtune Read. The company is focused on productivity gains for professionals, cha
Shane Orlick President of Jasper AI on the Future of Writing and Generative AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 293
Bret 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 to
Taylan Kamis CEO of DeepZen on Synthetic Voices for Audiobooks and New Applications - Voicebot Podcast Ep 292
Taylan Kamis was inspired by the movie Her to pursue AI technologies that could make synthetic characters and voices more lifelike. After several years with Microsoft, including time on the media and applications team and serving as a CFO for some venture-stage startups, Kamis co-founded DeepZen in 2017. The first problem the DeepZen team sought to address was one of the harder ones in the industry: creating synthetic voices that were high enough quality to be used as narrators for audiobooks. A
Synthetic Media Year in Review 2022 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 291
2022 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
Voice AI Year in Review 2022 Enterprise Edition - Voicebot Podcast Ep 290
Enterprise voice AI has been overshadowed for years by the tech giants' activities. That meant the consumer applications often drowned out what was happening in the enterprise. At the same time, most enterprises were moving slowly. That has changed over the past two years. Enterprise adoption of voice and conversational AI solutions is growing steadily and expanding into new use cases. Today we will talk about the contact center, restaurants, automotive, and media sectors. We also go into some d
Voice AI Year in Review 2022 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 289
This is the first of Voicebot's voice AI 2022 year-in-review episodes, and today we focus on consumer solutions. There was no lack of news this year, and industry insiders Peachy-Jean Retizos, Tom Hewitson, and Eric Schwartz join me to break it all down for our sixth annual year-in-review show. Amazon's layoffs that impacted the Alexa and devices groups dominated industry discussions late in the year. However, it was just a few months earlier that a similar move by Google drove industry news cyc
Jesse Shemen CEO of Papercup on Making the World's Media Available in Any Language - Voicebot Podcast Ep 288
Jesse Shemen is CEO of Papercup, a company he co-founded in 2017. The company transforms audio and video media into multiple languages to broaden its reach. Papercup estimates that 99% of all content is only available in one language. Using AI tools in conjunction with human translators and a synthetic speech engine, Papercup is working with companies such as Bloomberg and Insider to make their content available in the native language of their international audience. Shemen has a finance degree
Chris Parkinson Co-founder and CTO of RealWear on Voice Controlled Applications for Industrial Workers - Voicebot Podcast Ep 287
Chris Parkinson began working on the idea behind RealWear while at Kopin back in 2007. In 2015, he founded WearNext to explore routes to further technical development and commercialization of the productivity tool for connected industrial workers. That ultimately led to co-founding RealWear in 2016. The company presents itself as providing the first hands-free and fully ruggedized head-mounted tablet solution. But it's not quite a tablet. It's a headset for voice interactive hands-free access
YouTuber Dom Esposito Talks About Creating His Digital Twin - Voicebot Podcast Ep 286
Dom Esposito is a top YouTuber that worked with Hour One to create a digital twin. That's a virtual human clone of himself. In this interview, we show Dom's clone and talk to the real Dom about his motivation behind the project. We also discuss the process for creating the clone and use cases he thinks will be most impactful. Dom Esposito began creating tech review videos on YouTube way back in 2012. He was previously a writer at 9-to-5 Mac and AppAdvice and a Creatives Producer at ClearChannel
Natalie Monbiot from Hour One on New Virtual Human Use Cases - Voicebot Podcast Ep 285
Natalie Monbiot from Hour One joined me for the recent Synthedia event to present several new use cases in language learning, media, and entertainment that are expanding the market for virtual humans. She shows how synthetic media is being used at Berlitz, Defiance Media, and people creating entertainment on YouTube. Monbiot joined Hour One as head of strategy in 2019. Prior to Hour One, she was an SVP at Publicis, where she worked on new technologies and the Samsung account. She was an SVP at
Maaike Coppens on Conversation Design Themes in 2022 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 284
Maaike Coppens is the author of the new book Design Conversationnel published in French by Eyrolles with a forthcoming English edition. Maaike and I first met at an event in 2018 in Paris, and that provided a springboard to discuss how the priorities and expectations around conversation design have changed. One important topic we discuss is the rising focus on task completion for voice assistant applications as opposed to likeability and building affective trust. Much of this is driven by changi
John Campbell Founder of Rabbit & Pork on Voice SEO and What Use Cases Work Today - Voicebot Podcast Ep 283
John Campbell is the founder and managing director of the voice AI agency Rabbit & Pork, a division of TIPi Group. Previously he was head of performance marketing and SEO at another TIPi agency ROAST. The agency's start was automating the collection of answers from Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for a variety of questions. That data led to several reports which captured the attention of brands, and from there, Rabbit & Pork began building Alexa skills, Google Actions, and other voice interact
Zohaib Ahmed on Creating Andy Warhol's Voice Clone - Voicebot Podcast Ep 282
Zohaib 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 cre
Jean-Baptiste Martinoli on How to Make a Film Entirely with AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 281
Jean-Baptiste Martinoli's current job title is full stack innovator. That seems about right given what he done lately with generative AI tools. One of his latest creations, "Exrtraterrestrial Message," won the award for the best Sci-Fi short film at the Golden Minds film festival. The film was entirely created with generative AI tools. Today's interview was conducted at the Synthedia conference and there is a YouTube version with the full short film on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Martinoli reve
Muddu Sudhakar CEO of Aisera on Conversational AI Automation - Voicebot Podcast Ep 280
Muddu Sudhakar is the founding CEO of Aisera an automation software company built around conversational AI technologies. He breaks down how the company began with internal helpdesk solutions and moved into other parts of the enterprise, including dev ops, contact center, and broader customer experience solutions. He stresses how all of Aisera solutions are focused on automating business processes. Sudhakar is a former senior VP and GM at ServiceNow, Splunk, VMWare, and Pivotal. He was CEO at Ca
Voice Summit 2022 Interviews Part 2 with Women in Voice, Skilled Creative, 169 Labs, VUX World, Attention Live, and Veritone - Voicebot Podcast Ep 279
Voice summit is the largest annual gathering of conversational AI professionals. Voicebot took the opportunity to interview several industry leaders to get their perspectives on the conversational AI market today and where it is headed. In this Part 2 from the Voice 2022 interviews, we have six more guests, including: - Sara Taheri of Prudential interviewing Kan Simms, VUX World (6:08) - Brandon Kaplan, Skilled Creative (9:35) - Corey Hill, Veritone (14:21) - Maddie Apple, Women in Voice
Voice Summit 2022 Interviews with Veritone, Voicify, Speechly, Voice Lunch, Vixen Labs, and Modev - Voicebot Podcast Ep 278
Voice summit is the largest annual gathering of conversational AI professionals. Voicebot took the opportunity to interview several industry leaders to get their perspectives on the conversational AI market today and where it is headed. Guests include: - Michal Stanislawek, Utter One / VoiceLunch (6:25) - Rupal Patel, Veritone (12:57) - Jeff McMahon, Voicify (18:46) - Collin Borns, Speechly (25:44) - Susan Westwater, Vixen Labs (33:08) - Pete Erickson, Modev / Voice Summit (36:58) Topics range f
Anne Spalter on Art and AI Text-to-Image Generators - Voicebot Podcast Ep 277
Anne Spalter is a world-renowned artist with artwork in museums, galleries, and collections throughout the globe. She is known for having created the curriculum for the first university-level digital art programs. That work was for the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University in the 1990s. More recently, Anne has emerged as a pioneer in creating fine art using AI-based text-to-image generators. She launched a collection of 501 pieces earlier this year called AI spaceships, which she m
Greg Cross from Soul Machines on Autonomous Digital Humans - Voicebot Podcast Ep 276
Greg 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 serv
Shiv Rao CEO of Abridge on Voice Assistants for Patients and Doctors - Voicebot Podcast Ep 275
Shiv Rao is a cardiologist that co-founded Abridge in 2018 to help patients and doctors get better results from their encounters. Abridge listens to the doctor-patient conversations, provides a transcription, and categorizes specific details such as medications, symptoms, diagnoses, procedures, and the care plan. Patients can access the conversation details through a mobile app that also highlights key words such as medications and procedures and provides click-through definitions. For doctors,
Dylan Fox CEO of Assembly AI on AI Models as a Service - Voicebot Podcast Ep 274
Dylan Fox founded Assembly AI in 2017 and was part of the Y Combinator Accelerator that year. Prior to founding the company, Dylan was a senior software engineer at Cisco. Assembly AI fashions itself as an expert in AI model training and provisioning. It researches the new AI models, trains and then deploys them and makes the models available as a service to other companies. The idea is to give developers easy access to high performing AI models without having to set up a hosting environment or
Rabi Gupta CEO of the Gift Giving Evabot - Voicebot Podcast Ep 273
Rabi Gupta and his co-founder created Evabot, the gifting assistant, in 2017. The company went through the Boost VC accelerator, where he was also an entrepreneur in residence, in 2017. Rabi was also CEO and co-founder of iCouchapp, which was acquired by Vidooly in 2016. Our discussion today is about a practical application for a virtual assistant. The corporate gift-giving market is $250 billion annually. Gupta and his co-founder created Evabot to make that process easy, efficient, and better m
Nick Schwab CEO of Sleep Jar on Building a Profitable Voice App Business - Voicebot Podcast Ep 272
Nick Schwab is making his record fifth appearance on the Voicebot Podcast. You can hear him previously on episodes 2, 22, 58, and 96. In fact, I recommend you check out episodes 2 and 58 to learn more about his background and a sense of how his business has evolved from deal of the day to stock ticker to sleep sounds empire. The more notable aspects of Nick's appearance today are that he has not been on the podcast in three years, and Sleep Jar is one of the most successful Alexa skills and voi
Val Jones CTO of Storyfile on Conversational Video - Voicebot Podcast Ep 271
Val Jones joined Storyfile as CTO in January 2021 after a leadership role at Raxium and 16 years at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. The institute has been at the forefront of synthetic media research and innovation for more than a decade. Storyfile has products that might be thought of by some as virtual humans or digital twins, but the company characterizes its solution as conversational video. After capturing robust video recordings of people discussing a particular set of topics
Mark Fosdike CEO of Datch on Custom Voice Assistants for Manufacturers - Voicebot Podcast Ep 270
Mark Fosdike co-founded Datch in 2017 after spending several years as an aircraft systems design engineer at CAV aerospace. His co-founder also had experience in industrial manufacturing at Siemens and Transpower. Both are engineers, so they had a keen sense of the challenges of getting access to information and entering data while working with heavy equipment in industrial manufacturing. Mark breaks down the key use cases, the tech stack for Datch, training the voice assistant, and much more
Paul Cutsinger from Nvidia on Simulation, Metaverse, and Conversational AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 269
Paul Cutsinger is the director of Nvidia Omniverse Exchange, a platform for building simulation and metaverse environments. He discusses how companies are using Omniverse to simulate operations to improve efficiency and reduce operational risk, in addition to capabilities around metaverse and virtual human development. Prior to Nvidia, Paul ran developer education and evangelism programs for Amazon Alexa, worked on the Amazon App store, in gaming at Disney, and with browsers at Microsoft. He wil
Say It Now CEO Charles Cadbury on Actionable Voice Ads - Voicebot Podcast Ep 268
Charles Cadbury breaks down how voice assistants can be used to drive awareness and sales for consumer brands. Say It Now was founded in 2018 and won the European Alexa Cup in 2019. The company made headlines during the COVID-19 pandemic when it rolled out a solution to help raise funds for charities through smart speakers. Learnings from that initiative led to the development of Say It Now's Actionable Audio Ads which drive user interaction with branded Alexa skills. Cadbury breaks down the eff
John Goscha CEO of Native Voice on Direct Access to Branded Voice Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 267
John Goscha founded Native Voice in 2020 to enable any custom voice assistant to become a first-class citizen on any device. That means it is not behind another voice assistant or buried in an app. It can instead be activated directly from any device by its branded wake word. We talk about why this is important to brands looking to deepen their relationship with customers and make access to their services more convenient. And, we talk about the Native Voice tech stack and what it takes to ena
Evan MacMillan CEO of Gridspace on Conversational AI Analysis - Voicebot Podcast Ep 266
Evan MacMillan started Gridspace 10 years ago to tackle a tough problem faced by contact centers: analyzing their conversational data. It's an application that stands apart from most conversational AI solutions with its focus on conversational intelligence as opposed to self-service. Before co-founding Gridspace, MacMillan was a co-founder at Zappedy, which was acquired by Groupon during the heyday of online deals communities. He earned a degree in product design from Stanford.
Alexa Live 2022 Recap Show with Firstenburg, Tucker, and Schwartz - Voicebot Podcast Ep 265
The 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.
David Liu of Sonde Health on Vocal Biomarkers - Voicebot Podcast Ep 264
David Liu is CEO of Sonde Health, a company using vocal biomarkers to assess patient health, wellness, and fitness. The company is white labeling its solution for app developers with initial products for respiratory and mental health problems. In the interview, Liu discusses the product, technology, and key markets serving as the first adopters. These include healthcare providers and payers along with one industry I wasn't expecting. Liu has been CEO of Sonde Health since 2019. He previously w
Timo Kunz on Synthetic Media and Audio as a Service - Voicebot Podcast Ep 263
Timo Kunz has a PhD in operations research and spent more than a decade as a data scientist and analyst before founding Aflorithmic Labs in 2019. The company's first product, API.audio, is a developer toolset for quickly adding synthetic voice audio combined with other features such as music and effects. It is promoted as the first audio-as-a-service solution for developers that enables control of key audio characteristics without the need for separate post-production audio engineering. Key use
Kim Conti and Chen Zhang of RAIN on Custom Voice Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 262
Voice assistants are broadly adopted by consumers and for several consumer facing activities such as customer support. Kim Conti, vice president of product, and Chen Zhang, chief technology officer of RAIN Agency share their experience building custom voice assistants for enterprise processes and products in general and more recently for deskless workers. They also share the details behind their beta version custom voice assistant for auto mechanics which is expected to be generally available la
The Top Voice AI Stories of the First Have of 2022 with Special Guests - Voicebot Podcast 261
Topics 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
Braden Ream CEO of Voiceflow on the Shifting Voice AI Market - Voicebot Podcast Ep 260
Braden Ream is CEO of Voiceflow, a leading conversational AI design collaboration solution combined with a no-code platform for deploying voice apps. Voiceflow was founded in 2019 and has tens of thousands of users and more than 400 companies. Today we discuss Voiceflow's evolution into enterprise solutions, its expanding feature base, and the top customer use cases. We also delve into how the conversational AI industry has changed including the shift to custom branded voice assistants as well
James Poulter CEO of Vixen Labs on Voice Assistant Consumer Data - Voicebot Podcast Ep 259
James Poulter and Vixen Labs along with the Open Voice Network and Veritone surveyed 6000 consumers in the U.S., UK, and Germany about their perception and use of voice assistants and smart speakers. We break down the findings and discuss the implications for the industry as a whole. Trends, data, industry news -- all the things you like. Poulter co-founded Vixen Labs in 2018. He previously was head of emerging platforms and partnerships for LEGO Group where he did some voice AI work and ear
Google Assistant Retreats on Conversational Actions with Firstenberg, Tucker, and Schwartz - Voicebot Podcast Ep 258
Google announced it will be sunsetting support for third-party conversational actions–the voice apps that work with Google Assistant–in June 2023. It decided there was no point in maintaining a separate app store just for voice and it is encouraging conversational action developers to port their experiences over to Android apps. This special edition of the Voicebot Podcast showcases Allen Firstenberg and Mark Tucker, both active developers of conversational actions and other voice app experience
Brandon Kaplan CEO of Skilled Creative and Co-Founder of Journey - Voicebot Podcast Ep 257
Brandon Kaplan founded Skilled Creative in 2017 and continues to serve as CEO. The agency is well known for delivering voice AI strategy, solutions, and analytics for top media and consumer good companies ranging from Meredith and HBO to Pottermore and Pepsico. In 2022, Skilled Creative was merged with two other agencies to form Journey to create a new "experience" agency with expertise in immersive technologies such as AI, Metaverse, and physical world activations. Kaplan also serves as Chief I
John Kelvie CEO of Bespoken on Improving Voice Assistant Performance - Voicebot Podcast Ep 256
John Kelvie is CEO of Bespoken, a leader in automated testing software for voice assistants. We discuss his company's journey from 2016 to 2022. And, we cover the voice assistant market evolution from Alexa and Google Assistant to custom voice assistants, customer support bots, and other novel applications. That discussion also takes us from predominantly consumer applications of voice assistants to the enterprise. You might also enjoy going back to episode 6 or 55 where John shared the perspec
Keyvan Mohajer CEO of SoundHound on 18 Years to a Billion Dollar Voice Assistant - Voicebot Podcast Ep 255
Keyvan Mohajer is CEO of SoundHound (SOUN), the creator of both a beloved music recognition mobile app and one of the most successful custom voice assistant development platforms. The company recently went public and carries a market capitalization of over $1 billion. We talk about the volatility of the stock but the real focus is drilling down into the company's business model, the use cases, and what the market wants in voice assistant technology today. Mohajer founded SoundHound in 2004 whil
Dana Young CEO of AIPEX on Voice Assistants for Hospitality - Voicebot Podcast Ep 254
Dana Young founded AIPEX in 2017 to solve a problem he faced as an independent vacation rental property host. Voice assistants could provide his guests with a better experience and save him the challenge of answering a lot of redundant questions. He started by building Alexa skills and Google Actions. AIPEX now has a shared service instance of Alexa for Hospitality which makes the solution scalable and easy to use for other property owners, hotels, and assisted living communities. Dana shares
Ilya Gelfenbeyn and Kylan Gibbs of Inworld on Voice AI in the Metaverse - Voicebot Podcast Ep 253
Ilya Gelfenbeyn is CEO and Kylan Gibbs is chief product officer of Inworld. The company has a novel voice AI service that gives brains to in-game and metaverse characters and enables them to have personalities, backstories, knowledge, and the ability to converse. It's an impressive combination of conversational AI technologies for configuring characters and operating them in virtual worlds. There is a lot of talk about metaverses and how conversational AI may play a role. Inworld has the most i
Raj Koneru CEO of Kore.ai on Conversational AI Today - Voicebot Podcast Ep 252
Raj Koneru is the CEO of Kore.ai. He founded the company in 2014 to tackle the need for automated interactions in messaging. That led to conversational AI services for messaging platforms ranging from white label solutions for enterprises to integration with WhatsApp Apple Messages for Business and other platforms. The company also expanded into voice services and last fall raised $70 million in a Series C funding round. Today, we discuss the evolution of chatbots and voice assistants, what
Zohaib Ahmed CEO of Resemble AI on Synthetic Voices - Voicebot Podcast Ep 251
Zohaib Zohaib Ahmed co-founded Resemble AI in 2019 after working as a software engineer at high profile and innovative companies including Magic Leap, Hipmunk, and Blackberry. Zohaib's work at Magic Leap introduced him to novel UI interactions and his work analyzing user data led to deep learning models. From there he began to explore synthetic media and speech synthesis and Resemble was born. Resemble AI graduated from the Betaworks Synthetic Camp accelerator back in 2019 and was recently in
Alex Serduik CEO of Voice Cloning Startup Respeecher - Voicebot Podcast Ep 250
Respeecher is one of the leading voice cloning solutions on the market today. It is also headquartered in Ukraine. In my recent update with Alex Serdiuk, I learned that despite the war in Ukraine, Respeecher was, in fact, still operating and fulfilling customer contracts. So, we agreed to catch up on Respeecher's current business and also let everyone know the company is still operating despite the war. You are really going to like this discussion. We talk about voice cloning for media, how it
Chris Maeda CTO of Botco on Bots and eCommerce - Voicebot Podcast Ep 249
Chris Maeda has an undergraduate degree in computer science from MIT and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon. He was hacking LISP machines in the late 1980s in his first AI job and then moved onto the famed Xerox PARC. After that, he wound up doing a lot of customer relationship management software startups including co-founding Rubric Software which merged with Broadbase in 2000 and later was absorbed into Kana where he was EVP and CTO. He also became CEO of a company that eventually acquired the mark
Chris Ume Co Founder of Metaphysic.ai and Creator of Deep Tom Cruise - Voicebot Podcast Ep 248
Chris Ume is a visual effects expert with many years experience in entertainment and corporate projects. In 2020, he began experimenting with deep fake technology, sourcing AI models from obscure Russian websites, and experimenting with new techniques. That led to a collaboration with an American actor known for Tom Cruise parody videos and Deep Tom Cruise was born. Following, the viral success of those deep fake videos and others, Ume co-founded Metaphysic.ai in 2021 and the company recently
Max Child CEO of Volley on Voice Games and the Matchbox Acquisition - Ep 247
Max Child makes his third appearance on the Voicebot Podcast to discuss the evolution of the voice games market as well as Volley's recent acquisition of Matchbox.io. Matchbox is the creator of the popular Alexa game Question of the Day and Max outlines Volley's strategy behind the purchase and how it fits into the company's portfolio. We talk extensively about voice app discovery and monetization and what is working today. Max is a graduate of Harvard and was an analyst at Boston Consulting Gr
Kundan Kumar Head of AI at Descript - Voicebot Podcast Ep 246
Kunden Kumar is head of AI at Descript. He was a co-founder of the innovative synthetic speech company Lyrebird which Descript acquired in 2019. He has a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Montreal and a computer science degree from IIT. Kumar was also a researcher at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithems (MILA) where he was mentored by Joshua Bengio.
Alex Quinn CEO of Disruptel Is Creating a Voice Assistant with Eyes - Voicebot Podcast Ep 245
Alex Quinn founded Disruptel while still in high school and the team just landed a big deal with the world's fourth-largest television maker. He says TCL was won over by the opportunity to implement the first voice assistant with eyes. Disruptel's Deep Frame product knows what is on the screen and can identify it in real time. It has an AI-vision system and an extensive facial recognition database along with a knowledge graph that gathers text-based data. A natural language voice assistant enabl
Voice AI Predictions 2022 with 6 More Industry Leaders – Voicebot Podcast Ep 244
Six 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
Voice AI 2022 Predictions and Barriers Part 1 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 243
Seven 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
Healthcare Voice Assistant Trends and Data Deep Dive - Voicebot Podcast Ep 242
Today 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.
Voice Shopping Data Deep Dive - Voicebot Podcast Ep 241
Today'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 r
Voice Year in Review 2021 The Consumer Edition - Voicebot Podcast 240
This is the U.S. edition and the Consumer edition of our two-part year in review episodes. We discuss the industry globally from a U.S. perspective with three guests that include: Chithra Durgam - Founder Blue Check Skill which helps bring celebrities and brands onto Amazon Alexa and also is a practicing dentist. Todd Mozer - CEO of Sensory, a company he founded in 1994. The company has been adding voice AI features to consumer products for over 25 years and can be found in billions of devices.
Voice Year in Review 2021 The Enterprise Edition - Voicebot Podcast Ep 239
This week we discuss voice year in review for 2021. All of the guests in this episode are based in Europe but operate globally so you will get both perspectives. Also, the conversation is heavily skewed toward enterprise voice applications because that drove so much of the important news in 2021. We start with an in-depth discussion of acquisitions and funding which were bigger in 2021 than in any previous year. Guests include: - Otto Soderlund is CEO and co-founder of Speechly which is pioneeri
Jon Stine Founder and Executive Director of the Open Voice Network - Voicebot Podcast Ep 238
Jon Stine is the Executive Director and founder of the Open Voice Network. Prior to founding OVN, Stine was global director of retail sales at Intel and a director of North American retail at Cisco. He has an MS in telecommunications from the University of Oregon. Today we talk about voice assistant interoperability, standards, and keeping AI systems open and consumer-friendly.
Raghu Ravinutala CEO of Yellow AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 237
Raghu Ravinutala co-founded Yellow.ai in 2015 to solve a problem he personally had encountered, poor customer support experiences. A former IC chip designer, Raghu was drawn by the idea that conversational AI combined with back-end systems integration could fully automate a wide array of customer problems nearly instantly without needing to wait on hold for support reps. In 2016, the company was accepted to the Microsoft Accelerator and the company counts over 750 enterprise clients globally. Pr
Vinay Shukla CEO of ConverseNow on Voice Assistants for Restaurants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 236
Vinay Shukla is CEO and co-founder of ConverseNow and the former founder and President of Endeavour Software. Endeavour was acquired by Genpact in 2016 where Vinay served as vice president of digital for two years before founding ConverseNow. Today we discuss ConverseNow's original focus, its pivot to serving restaurants in late 2019, and how the pandemic has transformed that industry. We also discuss how the company went from serving zero to over 1000 restaurants in less than two years. Earlie
Roger Kibbe on the Evolution of Samsung Bixby and Voice Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 235
Roger Kibbe is Senior Developer Evangelist at Viv Labs which is the home of Bixby in Samsung Research Americas. Today, we discuss the evolution of Bixby and voice assistants over the past five years. In particular, we break down the new Bixby Home features and the rise of AI in smart home features. We also go into depth around the importance of command and control voice interactions. Prior to Samsung, Kibbe founded Voice Craft, a voice app development firm which was preceded by 12 year at Gap I
Talkatoo CEO Shawn Wilkie on Voice for Veterinarians - Voicebot Podcast Ep 234
Shawn Wilkie is CEO of Talkatoo. A cross-platform speech-to-text solution for Veterinarians. It streamlines patient data input and works across multiple platforms. He founded the company in 2019 with the first product arriving late in the year. The onset of the pandemic led to rapid acceleration of vet adoption which continues through today and helped to secure a new funding round in September. Wilkie is also the host of the Veterinary Innovation Podcast which began in 2019. Prior to Talkat
Conversational AI at Pepsico with Elena Parlatore - Voicebot Podcast Ep 233
Elena Parlatore is the senior director of global digital consumer experience at Pepsico. Her role in the consumer insights group focuses on all of the ways consumers interact with Pepsico products and channels. A big part of that work is focused on consumer interaction with conversational AI technologies through Amazon Alexa, Facebook Messenger, website chatbots, and the call center. Today, we discuss the objectives, technologies, channels, and the results of Pepsico's many conversational AI in
Rob Carpenter CEO of Valyant on Voice in the Drive Through - Voicebot Podcast Ep 232
Rob Carpenter founded Valyant in 2017 with a specific focus on developing a voice assistant drive-through solution for fast food restaurants. While Carpenter insists Valyant is building a platform that can support other use cases in the future, he also is clearly focused on mastering the drive-through use case and goes into depth about the hardware, software, and workflow Valyant has built. We discuss the key technical and business process challenges that Valyant had to overcome and what their c
Edward Saatchi Founder of Fable Studio on Creating Virtual Beings - Voicebot Podcast Ep 231
Edward Saatchi is the founder of Fable Studio which is bringing AR and VR characters to life for the metaverse. Fable is creating both characters and a world where you can interact with them, but more interestingly, where these virtual beings can learn and evolve. Prior to Fable Studio, Saatchi was the founder of the Emmy Award-winning VR movie studio Oculus Story Studio. Earlier, he was the founder of NationalField which provided social media technology for the Obama for America organization an
Greg Cross Co-founder of Soul Machines on Virtual Humans and Interactive Animation - Voicebot Podcast Ep 230
Greg Cross is co-founder and chief business officer of Soul Machines, a leader in the creation of virtual humans (aka digital people). We discuss the origin story that goes back to 2012 as a research organization set up at the University of Aukland through the founding of Soul Machines in 2016, how 2020 accelerated the business, and what is happening today. In addition, we delve into the world of digital employees, the integration of voice AI solutions, touch on the metaverse, and review specifi
Amazon Product Launch Event 2021 Hot Takes from Voice Industry Leaders - Voicebot Podcast Ep 229
Amazon just announced a custom voice assistant deal with Disney and a bushel full of new products including a smart display you hang on the wall and a home robot. After the event concluded, a few of us gathered in the Voicebot Discord Community to discuss what we saw, our initial reactions, and what it is likely to mean for the industry. Plus, we learn which of the new products the podcast guests are planning to buy and why. Joining me in the conversation are Sarah Andrew Wilson of Matchbox.io,
Hannes Heikinheimo Co-founder and CTO at Speechly - Voicebot Podcast Ep 228
Hannes Heikinheimo co-founded Speechly in 2016 with the vision to create a low-latency, real-time streaming speech recognition API. Today, Speechly offers an API that it says is the fastest voice UI for the web and other platforms. Prior to Speechly, he was a data science partner at Reaktor, a language engineer working on Siri for Apple, the analytics lead at game-maker Rovio, a Senior Data Scientist at Nokia, and a machine learning researcher at Helsinki University of Technology where he earned
Daniel Kornev Chief Product Officer at DeepPavlov - Voicebot Podcast Ep 227
Daniel Kornev is chief product officer for DeepPavlov.ai which is the developer behind the open source framework for building voice assistants. The company has raised over $9 million in funding and has over 50,000 downloads and 5000 Stars on GitHub. In addition, Kornev served as an advisor to the Alexa Prize team from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Before DeepPavlov, Daniel Kornev spent two years working as a consultant and interim executive with a variety of conversational AI
Andy Mauro CEO of Automat on Conversational Commerce - Voicebot Podcast Ep 226
Andy Mauro is the CEO of Automat which he co-founded in 2016. Its solution creates personalized shopping experiences for eCommerce that learns the needs of customers through a conversational interaction that then returns better product recommendations and higher conversion rates. The AI part of the solution starts by ingesting a product catalog and labeling the content to help drive better understanding about how the products fulfill needs beyond categories and specifications. It complements thi
Professor Jan Sedivy on Winning the Alexa Prize SocialBot Challenge and 40 Years in Voice Tech - Voicebot Podcast Ep 225
Jan Sedivy is a Researcher at the Institute of Cybernetics and Robotics at the Czech Technical University (CTU) and a member of the faculty of electrical engineering. This is also his alma mater where he earned a PhD in 1983. Jan served as the faculty leader for Team Alquist from CTU which was the 2021 winner of the Amazon Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge. The SoicalBot Grand Challenge is for university teams to develop conversational bots that can hold a conversation with a user for an ave
Trends for Voice Assistants Use in the Car 2021 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 224
Voice 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
Ryan Star CEO of Stationhead on Social Audio and the Evolution of Media Creators - Voicebot Podcast Ep 223
Ryan Star is CEO and founder of Stationhead, a social audio app that enables anyone to start their own social, global radio program. He is a recording artist that got his big break playing at CBGBs in New York and then opening for Bon Jovi when he was still in high school. Today, he has more than 40 million plays on Spotify and around 200,000 monthly listeners. Ryan has worked in entertainment long enough to understand where there are gaps for creators, particularly those that haven't hit it big
Ryan Steelberg President of Vertione on AI Applications that Mine Unstructured Data - Voicebot Podcast Ep 222
Ryan Steelberg is President of Veritone. He co-founded the company with his brother in 2014 and it became publicly traded on NASDAQ in 2017. Ryan has a notable record of successful startup exits in his career that spans 25 years in tech. In earlier companies, as you will hear today, the Steelberg brothers applied large-scale data processing to advertising before that was commonplace and were instrumental in the development of what we now call programmatic advertising. Veritone today provides an
Bernadette Nixon CEO of Algolia the Unicorn Search and AI Company - Voicebot Podcast Ep 221
Bernadette Nixon is CEO of Algolia, a company that processes more than 1.5 trillion searches per year for over 10,000 customers. She joined the company in early 2020 in the midst of the global pandemic and what turned out to be explosive growth. Prior to Algolia, Nixon was CEO of Alfresco, President of SDL, and an SVP at OpenText. She has worked across the spectrum of search from pure SaaS solutions to open source and now is steering the API-first solution approach at Algolia which includes elem
Conversations with Things Authors Diana Deibel and Rebecca Evanhoe - Voicebot Podcast Ep 220
Conversation designers Diana Deibel and Rebecca Evanhoe discuss the practical knowledge required to design effective conversations with things such as chatbots and voice assistants. We also discuss the evolution of conversation design over time and across modes of interaction. Diana Deibel is a director at Grand Studio where she helps clients create user-focused experiences, including many that involve voice user interfaces. Before Grand Studio, Deibel was a VUX design lead at Allstate, voice us
Natalie Monbiot of Hour One on Virtual Humans Automated Video Production and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 219
Natalie Monbiot is head of strategy and business development for Hour One. She is working with companies across a number of industries as varied as real estate, eLearning, automotive, and consumer brands and is shaping Hour One's go-to-market and growth strategies. Prior to Hour One, Monbiot was an SVP at Publicis where she worked on new technologies and the Samsung account. She was an SVP at UM Worldwide before that focused on digital and strategic innovation and earlier in her career worked at
Yakir Buskilla CEO of CoCoHub Talks Chatbots and Virtual Humans - Voicebot Podcast Ep 218
Yakir Buskilla is CEO and co-founder of Cocohub, a publicly traded company on the Israeli stock exchange best known for its no-code chatbot development suite. Recently, the company is increasingly associated with virtual human technology, and Anna, one of the characters it developed as a chatbot avatar for deployment on Zoom and through other video channels. Buskilla took over as CEO after several years at Nielsen where he oversaw the company's R&D operation in Israel. Earlier, he co-founded Sem
Orchid Bertelsen Head of Digital at Nestle Talks Virtual Humans and Alexa Projects - Voicebot Podcast Ep 217
Orchid Bertelsen is head of digital strategy and innovation at Nestle USA. She has created the digital innovation road maps for over 40 Nestle brands as well as delivering new projects such as Ruth the cookie coach virtual human. Prior to Nestle, Orchid spent several years in the digital agency world and in consulting. Today we discuss the anatomy of a virtual human project for a consumer brand - the rationale, the tech, the project stages, and more. We also discuss Alexa skill development for c
Brandon Kaplan CEO of Skilled Creative Discusses the Rise of Voice in Media and Commerce - Voicebot Podcast Ep 216
Brandon Kaplan is CEO of Skilled Creative, an agency he founded in 2017 that focuses on helping leading media and consumer brands deploy voice technologies for user engagement and commerce. Today, we discuss his firm's work with HBO, Pottermore, Meredith, and a few consumer brands along with dominant trends in the industry. Kaplan received an outstanding achievement award for industry contributions from Project Voice in 2021. Prior to his current agency, Kaplan was President of Ruxly Creative an
Dr Joan Palmiter Bajorek Founder of Women in Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep 215
Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek is founder and CEO of the non-profit Women in Voice which was started in 2018. She is an advisor to several companies in the voice AI space, a popular conference speaker, and a consultant for voice user experience design. After earning an undergraduate degree in French, Photography, and Graphic Design, Bajorek received a Masters in Linguistics from UC Davis and then of PhD in speech language technology from the University of Arizona. Today we discuss the latest growth f
Brad Stone Author of Amazon Unbound - Voicebot Podcast Ep 214
Brad Stone is the New York Times bestselling author of two books about Amazon, The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound. Together, they tell a complete story of Amazon over 25 years of evolution. Amazon Unbound includes an in-depth look at the origin behind Amazon Alexa and Echo and their implications for the industry. Stone is a senior executive editor overseeing tech industry reporting at Bloomberg News. He began his tech reporting career at Newsweek covering Silicon Valley and was later a tech
Joseph Turow Author of Voice Catchers on Voice Tech, Marketing and Privacy - Voicebot Podcast 213
Joseph Turow is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication -- the same school where he earned his PhD. Turow is the author of over 150 articles and 10 books including the recently published The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet. He has some pointed critiques of how voice technology is used, what should change, and where we need further debate. We go point-by-point through many of these arguments
Ian Freed CEO of Bamboo Learning and Head of Amazon Devices When Alexa Launched - Voicebot Podcast Ep 212
Ian Freed is co-founder and CEO of Bamboo Learning, the creators of award-winning Alexa skills for childhood education. As you know, 2020 changed everything in education and Bamboo is filling an interesting gap for in-home learning since 2018. Before Bamboo, Ian spent nearly 13 years at Amazon. While there he served in the coveted Tech Assistant to the CEO role where he was Jeff Bezos' shadow for a year. Afterward, Freed become Vice President of Kindle and then Vice President of Amazon Devices.
Danny Tomsett CEO of UneeQ Talks Virtual Humans - Voicebot Podcast Ep 211
Danny Tomsett is the founder and CEO of UneeQ. He founded the company in 2009. It was originally called FaceMe and was focused on video chat with humans for customer service. The idea was ahead of its time. Several years ago the company shifted to the virtual human solution at a time when conversational AI and visual rendering techniques were just coming into their own. UneeQ today is one of the leaders in software for creating virtual humans for customer contact centers, marketing, and other ap
Lauren Kunze CEO of Pandorabots on Chatbots and Virtual Humans - Voicebot Podcast Ep 210
Lauren Kunze became CEO of Pandorabots in 2013. However, her involvement with the company goes back to 2002. As a teenager she developed one of the first chatbots, Lauren bot, using the company's technology. So, Lauren has had a front row seat to the many phases of bot development. Twenty years' worth of insights. She graduated from Harvard with degrees in English and Neurobiology. Pandorabots has over a quarter of a million registered developers on its platforms, has been used to create more
Rob Hayes Head of Product at Voiceflow Talks Conversation Experience Design - Voicebot Podcast Ep 209
Rob Hayes is head of product at Voiceflow. He spent the past 18 months helping transform the no-code builder for Alexa skills into a multi-platform design and prototyping solution for enterprise-grade conversational experiences. Today, Voiceflow has over 60,000 users of its software which offers some unique insights into trends for the conversation design and development communities. Prior to Voiceflow, Hayes had an independent product management consultancy. His work included a nine-month tour
Audioburst Co-founders Amir Hirsh and Gal Klein - Voicebot Podcast Ep 208
Amir Hirsh (CEO) and Gal Klein (CTO) are co-founders of Audioburst. We gathered in Clubhouse to discuss analyzing, segmenting, packaging and making talk audio content discoverable in real-time. Audioburst is doing this daily on millions of minutes of radio and podcast content and the same technology could be applied to social audio. We discuss how it could make social audio conversations more easily discoverable in the moment and enable the best elements of those discussions to be easily accesse
Spotify Voice AI and Social Audio Strategy with Messina, Kemp, Schwartz and Greenberg - Voicebot Podcast Ep 207
Spotify recently released a custom voice assistant called 'Hey Spotify,' acquired (then rebranded) Locker Room as the foundation of a new social audio feature, and announced a new in-car voice-interactive device for audio content while on the go. I gathered some Spotify experts in Clubhouse to break down Spotify's voice AI and social audio strategy and its implications. Guests include: Air Greenberg - Formerly head of voice marketing at Spotify Dave Kemp - Creator of Future Ear Radio Chris Mess
Dr. Patricia Scanlon of SoapBox Labs Talks Voice AI and Education - Voicebot Podcast Ep 206
Dr. Patricia Scanlon is CEO and co-founder of SoapBox Labs, the leading company focused on voice recognition technology for children. Most voice recognition solutions today are optimized for adult speakers and have high error rates when applied to children's vocal patterns which are constrained by immature biological development and language proficiency. SoapBox Labs was created to fill this gap in ASR performance for kids. In today's interview, Scanlon discusses the EdTech market, the changing
Nuance Acquired by Microsoft: Breaking Down the $20B Deal - Voicebot Podcast Ep 205
Microsoft announced a $20 billion acquisition of Nuance this past week and Voicebot invited four experts in the field to help break down why the deal makes sense and what it means for the industry. Kavita Reddi is co-founder of Voxta, a provider of automated speech recognition technology for call centers and embedded products. Tom Hebner is vice president of Nueraflash and previously spent a dozen years as head of innovation for voice and AI technology at Nuance. Nate Treloar is co-founder an
Voice Games with Doppio, Drive.fm, Matchbox.io, and Volley - Voicebot Podcast Ep 204
Today, we talk voice-first games, other interactive audio content, and creating voice experiences for the smart speaker, smartphone, and in the car. Our guests have many years of successful game development for voice and on other platforms. Sarah Andrew Wilson is Chief Content Officer of Matchbox.io which is better known for its popular games voice games such as Question of the Day, Guess My Name, and Kids Quiz. Matchbox began building games as Alexa Skills and now also has a mobile app and podc
Per Ottosson CEO of Artificial Solutions - Voicebot Podcast Ep 203
Per Ottosson is CEO of Artificial Solutions, the Sweden-based maker of Teneo software used for building custom chatbots, virtual assistants, and conversational interfaces in over 80 languages. He joined the company in 2020 after a decade in leadership roles at IPSoft and two decades in enterprise software. Teneo is a popular software solution for contact centers that is also used for product integrations and marketing applications. The company's big focus of late has been its partnership with Mi
Brian Crannell SVP of Knowles on Tiny Speakers and MEMs Mics - Voicebot Podcast Ep 202
Tiny microphones and speakers are key enablers of the voice assistant revolution. From smart speakers to smart wireless earbuds (hearables), the audio components make it possible for voice assistants to communicate. Knowles Corporation is a leading supplier of these audio components for edge devices selling about $800 million in revenue annually. Brian Crannell is the SVP that oversees the development of audio solutions. He has been with Knowles for a decade, has degrees in mechanical engineerin
Bahubali Shete CEO of TinyChef on His Journey to 1M Voice App Users and New Voice Commerce Features on Alexa - Voicebot Podcast Ep 201
Bahubali Shete founded TinyChef in 2016 (originally known as Klovechef) as an IoT-plus-voice interactive cooking experience and pivoted to an ML-based and software-only solution two years later. That move led to the company's Sanjeev Kapoor Recipes becoming the number one Alexa skill in India for cooking and the default first-party solution for Amazon in the country. TinyChef Alexa skills are also available in the U.S. and Canada and recently implemented the new Alexa Shopping Cart beta for in-s
Aakrit Vaish CEO of Haptik - Voicebot Podcast 200
Aakrit Vaish is CEO and co-founder of Haptik an enterprise SaaS solution for building conversational AI-based intelligent assistants. The company's clients range from Samsung and Oyo to KFC, Coca-Cola, Club Mahindra, and Zurich Insurance. Haptik was acquired by Reliance Jio in 2019 for $100 million. It has a large user base in customer service applications but has more recently expanded its offerings in conversational e-commerce. Haptik customers have managed over 2 billion conversations on 100
3 More Clubhouse Power Users Offer Social Audio Insights with Mitch Joel, Kate O'Neill, and Teri Fisher - Voicebot Podcast Ep 199
Three guests join to share their social audio insights, how Clubhouse is evolving and approaches for using the social network. Mitch Joel (4:02) is well-known for the book and podcast both named Six Pixels of Separation. He is also a highly sought-after speaker on tech trends. Kate O'Neill (20:54) is author of Pixels in Place, a tech humanist, and an optimistic futurist. She is also a popular speaker at conferences and corporate events. Dr. Teri Fisher (39:30) is a sport and exercise physician
How to Use Clubhouse with Monique Howard, Tyler Crowley, and Adriana Freitas - Voicebot Podcast Ep 198
Three guests today share their Clubhouse experience and offer several strategies on how to get the most out of the new social audio network. Perspectives are shared from a voice AI tech startup founder, a tech event organizer, and venture capital investor. 5:02 - Monique Howard, Founder & CEO of Smarticles (mysmarticles.com) 18:43 - Tyler Crowley, Founder, Sthlm Tech Meetup / Week / Fest (sthlm.tech) 39:58 - Adriana Freitas, Partner at Muster Ventures and Deep Green Impact Ventures (musterventu
Ilya Gelfenbeyn, Founding CEO of API.ai (Acquired by Google and Now Dialogflow) - Voicebot Podcast Ep 197
Ilya Gelfenbeyn was the founding CEO of API.ai. He and his team were true pioneers in the voice AI industry and were rewarded for those efforts through an acquisition by Google in 2016. API.ai was the development environment that most of the first Google Actions were built upon along with tens of thousands of chatbots. It is better known today as Dialogflow after a rebranding in 2017, and is one of the most widely used solutions for building conversational AI experiences. What you may not know i
Clubhouse Analysis with Power Users Balaji, LGO, and Soccolich - Voicebot Podcast Ep 196
Today we interview three active users of Clubhouse in our series around the rise of social audio. Vajresh Balaji is first with his analysis of total Clubhouse users and how the app has changed over the past six months. Laura Gassner Otting is a best-selling author of the book Limitless and corporate consultant. She also hosts some of the most popular rooms in Clubhouse. Our final guest is Adam Soccolich, the creator of The Best of Clubhouse newsletter and website. He offers insights on a varie
Jeremiah Owyang Analyzes the Rise of Social Audio on Clubhouse, Twitter and More - Voicebot Podcast 195
Jeremiah Owyang is tech analyst that is closely tracking the rise of social audio networks. In this week's interview, we discuss Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, and some of the 25 other social audio startups he monitors. Jeremiah weighs in on six product categories that are growing up around social audio along with business models, monetization strategies, and predictions. We also evaluate the intersection of social audio and voice AI technology. Owyang is a founding partner of technology research f
Rachael Tatman PhD Linguist and Rasa Senior Developer Advocate - Voicebot Podcast Ep 194
Rachael Tatman has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Washington and began testing voice assistant speech recognition systems like Amazon Alexa from a research perspective in 2016. Today, Rachael is Senior Developer Advocate at open source conversational AI startup Rasa. She marries a deep computational and data science background with an understanding of linguistics to provide a unique view on conversational AI design and performance.
Vijay Balasubramaniyan CEO of Pindrop on Voice Identification Use Cases - Voicebot Podcast Ep 193
Vijay Balasubramaniyan is CEO of Pindrop, a leader in voice authentication technology for call centers. The interview was conducted on Clubhouse to discuss a new expansion of Pindrop to personalized consumer experiences such as media access on TiVo. Vijay co-founded Pindrop in 2011 after completing his PhD in computer science at Georgia Tech. Earlier in his career, Vijay was a research engineer at IBM and software engineer at Siemens and Intel. He first appeared on the Voicebot Podcast in Episo
Conversation Design Institute co-founder and CEO Hans van Dam - Voicebot Podcast Ep 192
Hans van Dam began his career as a copywriter for science and technology companies and that role led him to become a chatbot designer in 2014. His experience working in conversational design led to the realization that few enterprises had a standard model for conversational user experience development nor did they have any idea how to staff a team for success. In 2018, Hans co-founded the Conversation Design Institute to establish processes, techniques, and organizational standards to professio
Rohit Prasad Amazon VP and Head Scientist for Alexa AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 191
Rohit Prasad is vice president and head scientist of Alexa AI at Amazon. He joined the Alexa team pre-launch in 2013 as director of machine learning before moving up to his current role in 2016. In our conversation, we discuss his long-time hope for Star Trek-like technologies, his initial impressions of Siri when it launched, his first day on the Alexa team, the reaction of early adopters, first-party versus third-party experiences, Alexa custom assistants, and much more. Prior to Amazon, Prasa
Cheryl Platz Author of Design Beyond Devices on Multimodal Voice UX - Voicebot Podcast Ep 190
Cheryl Platz is the author of the new book "Design Beyond Devices, creating multimodal cross-device experiences" published by Rosenfeld. Platz is currently the principal UX designer for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She was on the core team that launched the Echo Look which was Amazon's attempt to inject Alexa into fashion selection. That was preceded by time working on Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant. She began her career as a game producer at EA and Griptonite. Platz is also a cas
2021 Voice AI Predictions Part 2 with Paquiot, Kibbe, Palmiter-Bajorek, and Kemp - Voicebot Podcast Ep 189
Here is Part 2 of our 2021 voice AI predictions. On January 1st, we published over 100 predictions from 50 industry leaders. Today, we go deeper with four guests that add some detail to their thinking around Voice AI in 2021. Topics covered include multimodal design, multimodal displays in healthcare, AI and ethics, voice on mobile, audio and Spotify. Malaika Paquiot, VP Product K4Connect - 4:10 Roger Kibbe, Senior Developer Evangelist Viv Labs/Samsung - 16:57 Joan Palmiter Bajorek, Head of Us
2021 Voice AI Predictions Part 1 with Thadani, Tingiris, Stapleton, and Fields - Voicebot Podcast Ep 188
On January 1st, we published over 100 predictions from 50 industry leaders. We go a little deeper with four guests today that elaborate on their thinking in Part 1 of our 2021 voice AI predictions episodes. Topics covered include owned/custom voice assistants, first-party voice experiences, virtual humans, and the view of UX designers regarding voice. Nithya Thadani, CEO RAIN Agency - 4:02 Steve Tingiris, CEO Dabble Lab - 17:17 Amy Stapleton, Co-founder Chatables - 38:18 Jason Fields, Chief
India 2020 Voice AI Year in Review with Haptik, Slang Labs, Klove Chef, and Women in Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep 187
Today, we have one last Voice AI Year in Review episode. This one is focused on what went down in India in 2020. Today's guests are some of the top Voice AI leaders in India and they share everything from what is happening in voice commerce, WhatsApp, and assistants on feature phones to how Indian consumers differ from the U.S. and much more. 3:24 - Aarkrit Vaish, founder and CEO of Haptik 18:40 - Kumar Rangarajan, Co-founder and CEO of Slang Labs 30:48 - Sarandeep Kaur, co-founder of Women in
Joe Petro CTO and EVP of R&D at Nuance - Voicebot Podcast Ep 186
Joe Petro is CTO and EVP of R&D for Nuance and has been with the company since 2009. Nuance is a voice giant doing $1.5 billion in annual revenue and has a valuation of over $12 billion today. For over a decade, Nuance essentially defined the voice industry holding many of its most significant patents and dominating several market sectors. Joe oversees an annual R&D budget of over $200 million including new features such as Ambient AI and a COVID-19 bot. Prior to Nuance, Joe was SVP of research
Voice AI in Europe Year-in-Review 2020 with 169 Labs, Soapbox Labs, and Voxalyze - Voicebot Podcast Ep 185
Today we talk about voice AI adoption and trends in Europe for 2020. My guests include Niamh Bushnell, chief communications officer of Soapbox Labs, Dominik Meissner, co-founder of 169 Labs, and Alexis Hue, founder and managing director of Voxalyze. The guests provide a broad perspective given that Soapbox offers ASR tech for children in custom voice interactive experiences for education and entertainment, 169 Labs develops voice experiences for consumer brands and enterprises, and Voxalyze has
Voice Developer Year in Review 2020 with Dabble Lab, Rumble Studio, and XAPPmedia - Voicebot Podcast Ep 184
For 2020, we decided to have a voice developer-specific year-in-review episode to make sure we spent sufficient time focused on the events that were the most impactful for developers. We were lucky to get three very experienced guests to discuss topics ranging from voice on mobile and the rise of custom voice assistants to voice for customer support, the rise of audio, the hype/utility disconnect, messaging, COVID-19, and much more. Michael Myers is vice president of product and head of developm
Voice AI 2020 Year in Review with Botmock, Matchbox.io, and Willowtree - Voicebot Podcast Ep 183
This is Voicebot Podcast's fourth annual year-in-review episode. We discuss the year's top stories ranging from COVID, contact centers, and custom assistants to the voice AI shift to mobile and the convergence of chat and voice. Our guests joining the discussion include Tobias Dengel (CEO of Willowtree), Brielle Nickoloff (Head of product at Botmock), and Sarah Andrew Wilson (Chief Content Officer of Matchbox.io). This is the first of three year-in-review episodes. Upcoming are Developer and Eu
Igor Jablokov CEO of Pryon on Custom Voice Assistants for the Enterprise - Voicebot Podcast Ep 182
Igor Jablokov is the founder and CEO of Pryon, a company that has set out to transform knowledge management in the enterprise with a self-training custom voice assistant that can easily integrate into multiple data sources and be deployed in hours. Pryon raised $20 million in 2019 led by Revolution after closing a $4.5 million seed round in late 2018. Jablokov is best known as the CEO of Yap, the company Amazon acquired to serve as the technical foundation of Alexa back in 2011. Earlier in his
James Chapman VP and GM of Music and Wearables at Qualcomm - Voicebot Podcast Ep 181
James Chapman is VP and GM of music and wearables at Qualcomm, which means he oversees both hearables and smart watches. Qualcomm is a driving force behind the chips that make each subsequent hearable generation more powerful and more power-efficient. Chapman arrived at Qualcomm in 2015 as part of the $2.4 billion CSR acquisition where he oversaw 400 engineers and later led the company's auto, CE, and IoT segments. Before CSR, Chapman spent many years in engineering and product roles at Broadco
Tom Livne CEO of Verbit on Automated Transcription and a $60M Funding Round - Voicebot Podcast Ep 180
Verbit just closed a $60M funding round after raising $30M earlier this year and $21M in 2019. We break down the company's AI-plus-human automated transcription business model, what is driving growth, and how the new funding will be employed. Tom Livne is CEO and co-founder of Verbit since 2017. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AppInsight. Tom is a graduate of the Yale School of Management and Technion and earned a law degree at IDC Herzliya. He previously appeared in episode 89 of Voic
Dennis Crowley Co-founder of Foursquare and Creator of Marsbot - Voicebot Podcast Ep 179
Dennis Crowley is co-founder and executive chairman of Foursquare, a pioneer in the rise of the mobile, local, and social apps famous for pioneering the venue check-in concept. Today, it supports popular consumer apps and a large enterprise business around consumer geolocation data. The company has 150,000 developer partners and says it powers location experiences for more than 1 billion people globally. Foursquare recently introduced Marsbot, an audio AR solution (i.e. a proactive walking assis
Kane Simms Co-Founder of VUX World on Voice Strategy, User Experience, and Industry Trends - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 178
Kane Simms is co-founder of VUX World, a voice studio, design consultancy, and creator of a popular industry podcast and numerous LinkedIn videos. Today, we discuss voice user experience design and specifically cover some elements of VUX World's methodology when working with clients. We also review voice strategy, industry trends, and much more. Kane is an astute observer of the voice industry landscape and one of the technology's most effective champions.
Dr Ben Goertzel CEO of SingularityNET and a Leader in Research for Artificial General Intelligence - Voicebot Podcast Ep 177
Dr. Ben Goertzel is co-founder and CEO of SingularityNet, an open, decentralized platform for connecting and orchestrating interactions between artificial general intelligence (AGI) agents and other software. He has been a leader in the pursuit of AGI for over 20 years. Goertzel is also an innovator and researcher in NLP including a recent paper on unsupervised grammar induction. Earlier, Goertzel led the software team that produced the intelligence behind the world's most famous robot, Sophia,
David Patterson Chief Science Officer of Aiqudo Discusses NLU and Semiotics - Voicebot Podcast Ep 176
Dr. Dave Patterson earned a PhD in artificial intelligence at Ulster University where he also led an AI research lab. He also has degrees in computer science and biochemistry. Dave spent 15 years as a senior lecturer at Ulster University before leaving to become the founding CEO of Sophia, an advanced search technology company that helped online publishers match advertising to reader interests. In 2017, Sophia Search was acquired by Aiqudo where Dave and his team added NLU capabilities to the Ai
Stanford Professor Monica Lam on the Almond Open Source Voice Assistant - Voicebot Podcast Ep 175
Dr. Monica Lam joined Stanford University's computer science department in 1988 after earning a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. She is co-author of the textbook Compilers Principles, Techniques, and Tools, known as the Dragon Book. More recently she has been leading the Open Virtual Assistant initiative that has at its core, the Almond open source voice assistant. Today we talk about privacy, security, the need for choice of virtual assistants that are not controlled by 2 or 3 big companie
Phillip Hunter Formerly of the Amazon Alexa UX Team and Founder of CCAI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 174
Phillip Hunter is the founder of CCAI Services where he helps companies develop voice user experiences using conversation AI and ML solutions. He previously was a vice president of Pulse Labs, head of user experience for Alexa Skills at Amazon, a Senior UX manager at AWS, a senior designer for Bing and Tellme while at Microsoft, a senior designer at 24-7.ai with a few more stops along the way during his career. He earned a degree in English from Texas A&M University. Today we discuss voice UX pr
Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek CEO of Women in Voice on Voice UX, Linguistics, and Building Community and Opportunity - Voicebot Podcast Ep 173
Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek is CEO of Women in Voice an organization she founded in 2018. It has grown to 15 chapters in nine countries and has hosted over 80 events worldwide. Bajorek is an advisor to several companies in the voice AI space and a sought-after conference speaker and consultant for voice user experience design. After earning an undergraduate degree in French, Photography, and Graphic Design, Bajorek received a Masters in Linguistics from UC Davis and a PhD in speech language techno
Two Voice Devs Mark Tucker and Allen Firstenberg Talk Alexa, Google Assistant, and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 172
My guests today are long-time voice developers and well know leaders in the developer community. Mark Tucker is senior architect for voice technology at Soar.com and owner of Shazaml Design. He is also an Alexa Champion, Bixby Premiere Developer, and was named one of Voicebot's Top Leaders in Voice for 2019. He has a degree in Management Information Systems from Brigham Young University and 25 years of software development and architecture experience. Allen Firstenberg is project guru for Obj
Google Product Launch Hot Takes with Jefferson Graham of USA Today and Eric Schwartz of Voicebot - Voicebot Podcast Ep 171
Today I have another extra episode for you to discuss the announcements from Google's 2020 Fall product launch. We knew in advance that we would finally see a replacement for the Google Home which was launched four long years ago. The Nest Audio is that replacement as the flagship smart speaker for Google. Other than that, we were expecting a new Pixel smartphone, which we did see, and a new Chromecast, which also made an appearance. There wasn't much for the voice industry to sink their teet
Amazon Product Launch Event Hot Takes with CNET, Voicebrew, and USA Today - Voicebot Podcast Ep 170
Today's episode is all about Amazon's big 2020 product launch event. We break down what was announced, what will be successful, and what it says about Amazon's product strategy. First up today you will hear my conversation with Ben Fox Rubin of CNET. He covers Amazon exclusively and joins me for the second year in a row. Next, we have my interview with Katherine Prescott of VoiceBrew, the most popular newsletter for Alexa users. Then, I throw down again with Jefferson Graham of USA Today. He
Alexa 2020 Product Launch Preview with Jefferson Graham of USA Today - Voicebot Podcast Ep 169
Amazon's 2020 product launch is coming up in a few days so Jefferson Graham of USA Today joins me for a preview of what to expect from Amazon during this year's event. We also look back at the many 2019 announcements and discuss which ones look like a success and which not so much. We talk about video, smart displays, smart TVs, Echo Frames (smart glasses), Echo Dot with clock, and more. It's your perfect companion for anticipating the 2020 launch even news. Jefferson Graham is the leading cons
James Vlahos of Hereafter AI Discusses Avatars That Preserve the Memories and Thoughts of Real People - Voicebot Podcast Ep 168
James Vlahos is the founder of Hereafter AI, a company that enables anyone to create a chatbot avatar of a real person. James' interest in chatbots started in the 1980s on a Commodore PET computer and was rekindled in 2015 when, as a reporter, he wrote a story about PullString's work on Hello Barbie. That led to him creating Dadbot, a chatbot that captured the memories and thoughts of his father that at the time was battling Stage IV cancer. After completing a book on tech's many decades of voi
TalkSocket Co-Founders Andrew Delorenzo and Chandler Murch - Voicebot Podcast Ep 167
TalkSocket just launched a Kickstarter for a physical product that makes Alexa (and other voice assistants) instantly accessible hands-free on any iPhone or Android smartphone. We talk about the product launch, the technical approach, the partnering strategy, and even how the company expects to eventually expand capabilities to China for Alibaba's and Baidu's voice assistants. Today's guests are Andrew Delorenzo and Chandler Murch, the co-founders of TalkSocket, a hardware device that makes Ale
Ian Bicking Talks Firefox Voice and Observations About Assistants Today - Voicebot Podcast Ep 166
Ian 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, Bi
Richard Weeks Head of Conversational Experiences at US Bank - Voicebot Podcast Ep 165
Richard 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 n
Jeanine Heck VP of AI Products at Comcast - Voicebot Podcast Ep 164
Jeanine 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 heavi
Dor Skuler Co-Founder and CEO of Intuition Robotics - Voicebot Podcast Ep 163
Dor 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
Top Voice AI Stories in the First Half of 2020 with Lau, Prescott and König - Voicebot Podcast Ep 162
This 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
Harjinder Sandhu Founder and CEO of Saykara a Voice Assistant for Doctors - Voicebot Podcast Ep 161
Harjinder 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
Todd Mozer CEO of Sensory Talks Custom Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 160
Todd 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 studie
Peter Durlach SVP of Healthcare Strategy at Nuance - Voicebot Podcast Ep 159
Peter 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
Scott Stephenson CEO and Cofounder of Deepgram - Voicebot Podcast Ep 158
Scott 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 activi
Alan Nichol CTO and Co-founder of Rasa - Voicebot Podcast Ep 157
Alan 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 startu
Punit Soni Founder and CEO of Suki the Voice Assistant for Healthcare - Voicebot Podcast Ep 156
Punit 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 th
Mike Zagorsek of SoundHound Discusses What it Takes to Deploy a Custom Voice Assistant - Voicebot Podcast Ep 155
Mike 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 assist
Hey Swisscom Custom Voice Assistant Launch Journey with Riccardo Lopetrone and Misha Zivkovic - Voicebot Podcast 154
Voice 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. Mi
BBC Head of Voice and AI Andy Webb Discusses the Custom Voice Assistant Beeb - Voicebot Podcast Ep 153
Andy 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 crea
Alan AI CEO Ramu Sunkara Talks Voice Assistants for Enterprise Apps - Voicebot Podcast Ep 152
My 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 201
Specialty and Custom Voice Assistant Design with VUI Agency's Esslinger, Hassan, and Baumeister - Voicebot Podcast Ep 151
Over 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
Brendan Roberts Founder and CEO of Aider Discusses Specialty Assistants for Small Business - Voicebot Podcast Ep 150
Brendan 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 b
Alex Capecelatro CEO of Josh AI Talks Specialty Independent Assistants for the Home - Voicebot Podcast Ep 149
Alex 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 previou
Reghu Thanumalayan of Deutsche Telekom Talks Hallo Magenta and Independent Voice Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 148
You 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 bu
Ron Jaworski CEO of Trinity Audio on the Rise of Audio Content in the Voice Era - Voicebot Podcast Ep 147
As 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
Jeferson Valadares CEO of Doppio Games Talks Voice Interactive Games - Voicebot Podcast Ep 146
Many 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-fou
Vocalis Health CEO Tal Wenderow on Vocal Biomarkers, Healthcare, and Coronavirus - Voicebot Podcast Ep 145
Tal 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 focus
Voice Assistant Adoption in the Car Data Review with Cerence CEO Sanjay Dhawan - Voicebot Podcast Ep 144
The 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
Meredith, Media, and Voice with Rachel Reed - Voicebot Podcast Ep 143
Meredith 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. I
Coronavirus, Tech and Voice with Recode, CNET and Strategy Analytics - Voicebot Podcast Ep 142
Pandemics 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
Coronavirus Impact on Voice Industry Events with Erickson and Metrock - Voicebot Podcast Ep 141
Coronavirus 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
Michal Stanislawek CEO of Utter One Shares His Journey on Voice Platforms with Media, Games, and Monetization - Voicebot Podcast Ep 140
Michal 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
Ben Sauer Talks Voice UX in Healthcare and Other Use Cases - Voicebot Podcast Ep 139
Ben 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 Lit
Chris Sheldrick CEO of What3Words - Voicebot Podcast Ep 138
What3Words 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 o
David Cannington Co-founder of Nuheara on Shaping the Hearables Market - Voicebot Podcast 137
David 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.
Voice UX Today with Cathy Pearl of Google and Adva Levin from Pretzel Labs - Voicebot Podcast Ep 136
My 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,
Voice Assistants in Healthcare with Nate Treloar and Teri Fisher - Voicebot Podcast Ep 135.mp3
Today, 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 he
The NFL and Voice with Ian Campbell and John Gillilan - Voicebot Podcast Ep 134
The 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 NF
Mayo Clinic Discusses Voice Initiatives for Healthcare - Voicebot Podcast Ep 133
Healthcare 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 G
CES 2020 Interviews with Audioburst, Nuheara, NPR and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 132
We 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,
2020 Voice AI Predictions Part 2 on Voice App Architecture with Kelvie, McElreath and Ream - Voicebot Podcast Ep 131
As 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 McEl
2020 Voice AI Predictions Part 1 with Ware, Bass, and Lens-FitzGerald - Voicebot Podcast Ep 130
Today 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 le
Patricia Scanlon CEO of Soapbox Labs - Voicebot Podcast Ep 129
Patricia 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 th
2019 Voice Year in Review with Jargon, Voxly, and Voicebot - Voicebot Podcast Ep 128
2019 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
Hearables and Voice with Dave Kemp and Andy Bellavia - Voicebot Podcast Ep 127
What 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 batt
The Privacy and Security Episode with Molla, Mozer and Lens-FitzGerald - Voicebot Podcast Ep 126
Privacy 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 t
Jeff McMahon Voicify CEO on Voice and the Martech Stack - Voicebot Podcast Ep 125
Jeff 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
Tom Hewitson CEO of Labworks Shares 10 Hot Takes from 2.5 Years in Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep 124
Tom 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 inno
Samsung Bixby Developers from Home Advisor, Baby Stats, Dilli Labs, and Volley - Voicebot Podcast Ep 123
Four 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.
The ConverCon Interviews with SoundHound, Soapbox Labs, Algolia, and Webio - Voicebot Podcast Ep 122
This 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 M
Larry Heck CEO of Viv Labs and SVP at Samsung Talks Bixby and 30 Years in Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep 121
Dr. 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 N
Sanjay Dhawan CEO of Cerence Talks About Voice and AI in the Car - Voicebot Podcast Ep 120
Sanjay Dhawan is CEO of Cerence, the recent spin-out company from what used to be known as Nuance Automotive. On October 1st it became a separate company and currently has a half a billion-dollar market cap and $300 million in forecasted 2019 revenue. Cerence has over 60 automotive customers and its technology can be found in 280 million vehicles. Previously, Dhawan was CTO of Harman International and President of the Connected Services Division. He joined Harman through an acquisition of Symph
Voice Landscape in Europe from All About Voice Conference - Voicebot Podcast Ep 119
This week's interviews were conducted onsite at the All About Voice Conference in Munich, Germany. That enabled us to capture the European (and Isreali and even some U.S.) perspective on voice assistant adoption. The five guests come from France, Germany, Isreal, and Poland. We discuss European voice assistant adoption, voice UX design principles, open source versus proprietary software approaches, voice assistant experiments in primary education, voice in podcasting and media, and enterprise vo
Enterprise Voice Assistant Adoption and Org Structure with Nestle, RBC, and American Red Cross - Voicebot Podcast Ep 118
During the Voice 19 conference, I had the opportunity to host a panel discussion of enterprise voice leaders from Nestle, Royal Bank of Canada, and the American Red Cross. We discuss the first multimodal Alexa skill, Nestle Goodness, with Josh Baillon who also reviewed the company's voice strategy pillars of search, commerce, and utility. And, we hit on lessons learned around voice app discovery. Royal Bank of Canada's Ryan Matthews talked about a variety of financial services use cases and the
Financial Services and Voice AI with Prudential, Visa and TD Ameritrade from Voice Summit - Voicebot Podcast Ep 117
Financial services has become one of the leading industries driving the adoption of voice ad AI technologies. At the Voice 19 conference this year I hosted a panel with Adam Kaye, VP of Architecture Global Business Technology Solutions for Prudential Financial; Mark Jamison, Global Head of Innovation Design for Visa; and, Sunayna Tuteja, head of strategic partnership and emerging technologies at TD Ameritrade. We talk about how voice AI is impacting these companies in their relationships with co
Amazon Alexa Product Launch Event Commentary from Amazon's Daniel Rausch, USA Today, The Spoon, CNET, and Voicebot - Voicebot Podcast Ep 116
Amazon 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
Chris Mitchell CEO of Audio Analytic - Voicebot Podcast Ep 115
Chris Mitchell is CEO and founder of Audio Analytic. He has a Ph.D. in information retrieval from Anglia Ruskin University and also holds degrees in audio and music technology and electrical and electronics engineering. He filed a patent for some of the core technology behind Audio Analytic more than a decade ago after completing his Ph.D. and then accepted a Kaufman Fellowship for entrepreneurship in 2007. He returned to Anglia as a lecturer and researcher and founded Audio Analytic in 2010. Yo
10 Voice Technology Applications That are Not Alexa and Friends with Jeff Adams CEO of Cobalt- Voicebot Podcast Ep 114
Jeff Adams is best known for leading the ASR team that built Amazon’s Alexa and we went into that history in-depth in episode 59 last year. He has accumulated over 20 patents in speech technology since the 1990s working as an engineer and CTO for some of the biggest names in the industry. Today, Jeff is CEO of Cobalt Speech which helps develop voice technology for new applications beyond what you see from Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. He shares 10 of these innovative applications in this we
Gene Munster Founder of Loup Ventures Talks Voice SEO, Smart Speaker Sales, and Apple - Voicebot Podcast Ep 113
Gene Munster is managing partner at Loup Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on early-stage investing. We discuss Apple's voice strategy, Voice SEO data, smart speaker sales forecasts and much more. Munster co-founded Loup after 21 years as a research analyst at Piper Jaffrey where he covered familiar names such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. During his career, he has been named Top Stock Picker from Forbes, Best on the Street from The Wall Street Journal, and was widely followed f
Braden Ream CEO of Voiceflow - Voicebot Podcast Ep 112
Braden Ream is co-founder and CEO of Voiceflow which was officially founded in 2018. The company initially started around the idea of creating a new company to support the rise of voice assistants and that led the team to create several interactive children’s stories using Storyline. They then decided to build their own software to better meet their needs and this software so intrigued investors that Voiceflow pivoted to a code-free voice app development, design, and prototyping platform in late
Podcasts and Voice Assistants - Interviews with Google, Edison Research, Westwood One, Spoken Layer, Amplifi and Witlingo - Voicebot Podcast Ep 111
This week's interviews are all about the intersection of podcasts (the content) and voice assistants (the channel). Interviews were conducted onsite at the Podcast Movement conference. Guests include Zack Reneau-Wedeen of Google followed by Tom Webster from Edison Research, Suzy Schulz of Westwood One, Will Mayo of Spoken Layer and Steve Goldstein from Amplifi Media. We close with Ahmed Bouzid and Brielle Nickoloff from Witlingo. In all, seven guests weigh in on the intersection of podcasts and
Dave Isbitski of Amazon Talks About the Early Days of Alexa - Voicebot Podcast Ep 110
David 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 curren
Adam Cheyer of Samsung and Viv Labs Talks 25 Years of Voice Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Ep 109
Adam Cheyer is co-founder and VP of Engineering of Viv Labs and Vice President of R&D at Samsung. He is also a founding member of Change.org and Sentient. Previously, he was co-founder and VP of Engineering at Siri and a director of engineering at Apple. Earlier in his career, Adam held executive roles at SRI International in the computer-human interaction center and the artificial intelligence center. He earned an undergraduate computer science degree from Brandeis and an MS in computer science
Marketer Adoption of Voice Apps as a Marketing Channel - Voicebot Podcast Ep 108
Voicebot 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 p
Voice Summit 19 Onsite Interviews - Voicebot Podcast Ep 2017
Voice 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
Voice Assistant SEO for Brands with Ben Fisher and Ava Mutchler - Voicebot Podcast Ep 106
This week's episode is the audio from a recent webinar focused on the results of the Voice Assistant SEO Report for Brands. Ben Fisher of Magic + Co. and Ava Mutchler from Voicebot.ai join as guests to discuss the results. The report included results from over 4,000 questions about 200 consumer brands asked of Alexa, Bixby, Google Assistant, and Siri. The results surprised many because they were much worse than voice assistants typically do on general knowledge questions and ran counter to what
Amy Stapleton, Dave Kemp, and Pete Haas Discuss First 100 Episodes - Voicebot Podcast Ep 105
There have been so many rich insights offered by Voicebot Podcast guests that I wanted to figure out a simple way to unlock a few of those nuggets in case you missed the episodes. I also wanted to hear some discussion among dedicated and erudite listeners about what was said by past guests and what they thought mattered most. With 100 episodes to choose from, we narrowed it down by asking listeners to let me know their favorite episodes and why. Our panelists also weighed in and by my count, we
Top Voice News of First Half of 2019 with Ben Fox Rubin, Pete Erickson, and Eric Schwartz - Voicebot Podcast Ep 104
The first half of 2019 started with data around big growth numbers for smart speakers over the previous year, Amazon saying there were more than 100 million Alexa enabled devices, followed within a week by Google announcing there were over 1 billion devices with Google Assistant. That was followed by a lot of voice assistant news across multiple devices ranging from patio umbrellas to motorcycle helmets from the U.S. and China at CES. As the year progressed many more stories followed about on-de
NYC AI, Bots and Marketing Meetup with Betaworks, Skilled Creative, Vayner Media, and Resemble AI - Voicebot Podcast Ep 103
There are five guests in this week's episode that all attended and presented at the recent AI, Bots, and Marketing meetup in New York City. We are joined by Matt Hartman, a partner at Betaworks. He is followed by Brandon Kaplan, CEO of voice-focused agency Skilled Creative. Those were both recorded on site prior to the event and are followed by some post-event interviews with Claire Mitchell of Vayner Media, Saqib Muhammad and Zohaib Ahmed from Resemble Ai. We conclude with Alec Lazarescu, the o
Rupal Patel CEO of VocaliD Discusses Customized Synthetic Voices - Voicebot Podcast Ep 102
Rupal Patel is the founder and CEO of VocaliD. She founded the company in 2014 to provide voice prostheses for people that cannot speak in their own voices. The company continues with that work today and has expanded into customized voices for brands looking for a distinctive sound in their efforts around voice assistants. VocaliD was a Mass Challenge finalist in 2014 where it participated in the accelerator program. Patel has also been a professor at Northeastern University for the past 16 year
The Re MARS Interviews with Pulse Labs, Volley, The Cube, Reuters, Bondad, and Philosophical Creations - Voicebot Podcast Ep 101
Today’s episode is a compilation of six interviews captured onsite at Amazon’s inaugural Re: MARS conference earlier this month. MARS stands for Machine Learning, AI, Robots, and Space, and it is designed to showcase what Amazon thinks about the future of tech. We have a great lineup to discuss the Alexa Conversations and the cross-skill goal completion announcements as well as innovations on display ranging from neural detection from wrist movements to drone delivery and how we interact with ro
Audrey Arbeeny of Audiobrain Talks Sonic Branding and the Rise of Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 100
Audrey Arbeeny is an Emmy Award Winning Executive Producer and Creative Director that is also the founder of Audiobrain, a leading sonic branding agency. Sonic branding is brand strategy and production based on sound. In Audiobrain’s model, sonic branding includes strategy, original composition, sound design, audio identities, music supervision and licensing, research and usability, voice casting, education, UI design and more. Audrey founded the company 16 years ago after many years as a senior
Margaret Mayer VP of Conversational AI at Capital One Talks Voice Assistants, Alexa, and Eno - Voicebot Podcast Ep 99
Margaret Mayer is the Managing Vice President, Messaging, Conversational AI & Emerging Technologies at Capital One and has been with the company over 20 years. In her current role, Mayer is well known for her work overseeing Capital One’s Eno AI-based bot and Alexa skill, which was the first banking skill on the platform. Earlier in her career, Mayer was a database administrator. She earned an engineering degree from Cornel University and a PhD in industrial engineering from Lehigh University.
Marco Iacono COO of Viv and VP Mobile R&D for Samsung Bixby Talks Voice Assistant Design and Launch - Voicebot Podcast Ep 98
Marco Iacono is COO at Viv Labs and a VP of mobile R&D at Samsung. Viv Labs is the Samsung acquisition that gave us Bixby 2.0 that was introduced last summer with the Galaxy Note 9 Launch. Marco was previously the engineering project manager for Siri at Apple for iOS, CarPlay, and Apple Watch. Earlier in his career, Marco worked at PwC and he started off out of school as a Java Engineer at Dulcian. Marco earned a BS in Computer Science from Syracuse University where he is currently a member of t
Amir Hirsh CEO of Audioburst Discusses Audio Content Search and Discovery - Voicebot Podcast Ep 97
Amir Hirsh is founder and CEO of Audioburst. He founded the company in 2014 after a long career in cybersecurity with the idea of transcribing and indexing all audio content to make search and discovery as easy for audio as it is for text. Audioburst currently lists a lot of big names as customers including LG, Microsoft, Samsung, Dentsu, and Hyundai. Before Audioburst, Amir was a founder of Collactive which was acquired by IAI. He was also a founder of Sendoo and Blue Security. Earlier in his c
Four Developers React to Google IO 2019 Announcements - Voicebot Podcast Ep 96
The annual Google I/O developer conference had a lot of focus on Google Assistant as expected, but the company's direction is clearly shifting. In this week's Voicebot Podcast, four Google Action developers offer their initial reactions to the Google I/O keynotes and what they indicate about what Google sees as important and where the product line is headed over the next year. Dominik Meissner of 169 Labs talks about Duplex on the web, the on-device Google Assistant, the rise of Google's focus
Dave Isbitski Amazon Chief Evangelist for Alexa Talks Voice Adoption - Voicebot Podcast Ep 95
Dave Isbitski became Amazon's first chief evangelist for Alexa in 2014. That’s five years, but in smart speaker time, it’s an eternity. Dave started out hosting office hours in Alexa Slack, going to Meetups and more recently is most commonly seen speaking at conferences around the world. We caught up at the Alexa Live online conference recording session in Seattle shortly after he finished up recording the keynote. Prior to his role on the Alexa team, Isbitski was the chief evangelist for the Am
Ron Croen, Founding CEO of Nuance and Partner at You and Mr. Jones Brandtech Ventures - Voicebot Podcast Ep 94
Ron Croen was the founding CEO of Nuance who worked with three researchers at SRI to launch the company in 1994. Nuance went public in 2000 and merged with Scansoft a few years later. Today Nuance's market cap is just under $5 billion and for about a decade the company was THE voice company worldwide. Ron had a front row seat to many formative developments and events in the early days of voice technology. Amazon Echo truly impressed him when it came out in 2014 because it broke many tenets of in
Voice in the Car Part 2 with John Foster of Aiqudo, Rachel Battish of Audioburst, and Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media - Voicebot Podcast Ep 93
Voice interaction is becoming a common feature in cars but it is about more than just controlling temperature settings and navigation. Three innovators join Voicebot Podcast this week to share how they expect voice interaction in the car to evolve. John Foster, CEO of Aiqudo, discusses how tasks can be executed by using voice to activate one or more mobile apps while driving. Aiqudo's view is that all of the things you want to do are already reflected on the smartphone and the key is to make all
Voice Assistants in the Car with Amazon Alexa, Nuance Automotive, and Harman - Voicebot Podcast Ep 92
Voice assistants in the car pre-date Siri on iPhone by a decade and smart speakers in the home by even longer. The use cases bring obvious benefits because voice allows drivers to execute key activities in the car while keeping their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. Recorded live at the first Voice of the Car Summit, Arianne Walker discusses Amazon's Alexa Auto strategy, Adam Emfield reveals what Nuance has learned by bringing voice into the cabins of every major automaker, and Rashmi Ra
Smart Speaker Adoption Data for Australia with Matt Ware and Lachlan Pottenger of First and Ava Mutchler - Voicebot Podcast Ep 91
Matt 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, diff
Steven Arkonovich Creator of Big Sky on Alexa - Voicebot Podcast Ep 90
Steven Arkonovich is a professor of philosophy at Reed College by day and a leading Alexa skill developer by night. He began developing Alexa skills in 2015 before the ASK SDK was released and is best known for having the top-rated Alexa skill for weather. Big Sky has over 2,500 reviews and a 4.5-star rating. That puts Big Sky in the top 20 for skill reviews overall and number one in the weather category. Number 2 is Alexa’s native weather skill with about one-ninth the reviews and 2-star rating
Tom Livne CEO of Verbit Talks Voice and Transcription - Voicebot Podcast Ep 89
Tom Livne is the CEO and co-founder of Verbit.ai. The company provides an AI-driven transcription service for the legal and academic markets that guarantees 99.9% accuracy through a combination of speech-to-text automated speech recognition and human editors. Verbit recently raised $23 million less than one year after raising a seed round of $11 million on the strength of 400% growth. Previously, Tom was co-founder and President of AppInsight. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Management an
US Smart Speaker Adoption Trends with Jeff McMahon, Jason Fields and Ava Mutchler - Voicebot Podcast Ep 88
This 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
Mark Lippett CEO of XMOS on the Chips that Make Voice Assistants Work - Voicebot Podcast Ep 87
Mark Lippett joined XMOS in 2006 as VP of Engineering and was later promoted to COO and then CEO about three years ago. XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company with a particular emphasis on IP and products for far-field voice recognition. The company claims to be the first Alexa Voice Service certified solution for linear mic arrays and is used in devices ranging from smart speakers Orange Djingo and Deutsche Telekom Magenta to the Freebox Delta streaming media player. Before XMOS, Mark was CTO
Vijay Balasubramaniyan CEO of Pindrop Security - Voicebot Podcast Ep 86
Vijay Balasubramaniyan co-founded Pindrop Security in 2011 after completing his PhD and presenting his research about verifying identity based on sounds other than voices in telephone calls. He is the current CEO. The company uses voice biometrics to detect phone-based fraud and notably raised a $90 million funding round in December to expand into Europe and to start securing smart speakers and other voice-activated devices. Prior to founding Pindrop, Vijay was a software engineer at IBM, Google
Matt Ware and Lachlan Pottenger of First Talk Voice Shopping in Australia - Voicebot Podcast Ep 85
Matt Ware is Group Operating Director at Agencies 3Di, First, and TPN, and Lachlan Pottenger is Creative Director at First, a leading digital agency in Australia and the country's top developer of voice apps. Matt and Lachlan talk about a Google Action for Kmart that recommends gifts by type and price and integrates with the retailer's inventory management system to tell shoppers product availability by store location. It has a user return rate of over 30% and 60% of voice sessions include a scr
Amy Stapleton CEO of Tellables Talks Voice Interactive Stories - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 84
Amy Stapleton is CEO and founder of Tellables which works with authors to develop interactive story games designed to be played through voice assistants and social robots. Before founding Tellables, Amy was an analyst at Opus Research where she focused on intelligent assistants and coined the term meta assistant. Earlier, she worked in the technology services group at NASA for 14 years and was also a product manager at SAP. Amy earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin in Germanic Languages
Ben Fisher CEO of Magic and Co Talks Voice and Brands - Voicebot Podcast Ep 83
Ben Fisher is CEO and founder of Magic and Co, a voice consultancy that helps brands and enterprises implement voice assistant technologies. Previously Ben served as Chief Technology Officer of Doable Innovation and Waywire Networks. He began his career as a software engineer at Comcast and has a degree in philosophy and economics from Washington University in St. Louis. We talk voice apps, brands, discovery, and how voice assistants are changing marketing at places like Chobani, Bic, and the mu
Voice Assistant Use in the Car with Metrock, Vuori, and Mutchler - Voicebot Podcast Ep 82
Voice assistant use in the car is 60% higher than smart speakers on a monthly basis, but it doesn't get as much attention. There are more users and the use cases are different. The In-Car Voice Assistant Adoption Report sheds light on these differences. Bradley Metrock from VoiceFirst.fm and Niko Vuori of Drivetime.fm collaborated with Voicebot on the research and we discuss the findings along with my colleague Ava Mutchler. We break down the data and trends that will bring new focus to the car
Niko Vuori CEO of Drivetime.fm Talks Voice Games for the Car - Voicebot Podcast Ep 81
Niko Vuori is founder and CEO of Drivetime.fm, a company focused on creating games that you can safely play while you drive. The company's first title is a voice interactive trivia game that mimics a morning radio show and substitutes gameplay for music. Niko was formerly co-founder and COO of Rocket Games which was acquired by Penn National Games in 2016. He was formerly head of product at Toy Talk (which eventually became Pullstring) and studio general manager at Zynga where he oversaw Zynga P
Brian Roemmele Talks About The Last Interface and Intelligence Amplifier - Voicebot Podcast Ep 80
Brian Roemmele first started working with voice technology in the 1980's and recently expanded his research efforts. At the Alexa Conference in January 2019, Brian offered an update about his work including a forthcoming book called "The Last Interface," and product concepts named the Intelligence Amplifier and Wisdom Keeper. The Intelligence Amplifier will be a tool that records your life in real-time and instantly enables you to retrieve any information from your life experiences as needed. It
CES 2019 Interviews with Google, Samsung, Nuance, Alibaba and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 79
This week's episode has 11 more interviews from the CES 2019 show floor. We have real-time reactions from executives at some of the world's leading companies along with some established players in voice technology. Hear from: Dr. Yoon C. Lee, an SVP at Samsung Electronics America; Lilian Rincon, a Google Assistant product manager; Todd Mozer, CEO of Sensory; Dr. John Ostrem, co-founder of AvatarMind; Robert Policano, a Nuance Automotive product manager; Roger Zhang, an executive at Alibaba; Mosh
CES 2019 - Eight Interviews with Voice Innovators - Voicebot Podcast Ep 78
CES 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 ind
Paul Cutsinger of the Amazon Alexa Team - Voicebot Podcast Ep 77
Paul Cutsinger is responsible for building, supporting, and training the Amazon Alexa developer community. He joined Amazon in 2013, served as Chief Evangelist for the Amazon App Store, and then joined the Alexa team in 2016. His team travels around the world supporting hundreds of conferences, hackathons, and voice meetups in addition to running weekly office hours and training on Twitch. We talk about Alexa circa 2016, how it has changed each year since, and go deeper into discussions around v
Zach Johnson CEO of Xandra a Conversation Design Studio - Voicebot Podcast Ep 76
Zach Johnson is CEO and co-founder of Xandra, a conversation design studio. Earlier in his career, he was CEO at SPARK Bureau and Atmail. Way back in the 1990’s he was with iXL in Boston and Germany during the rapid rise of the web. He is a graduate of the New School and today splits time between Australia and New York. Xandra has worked on some of the highest profile Alexa skills available today including Westworld The Maze, The Sponge Bob Challenge, and Sesame Street.
Tim Kahle and Dominik Meissner of 169 Labs Discuss Voice Adoption in Europe - Voicebot Podcast Ep 75
Tim Kahle and Dominik Meissner are co-founders of 169 Labs, a leading voice app development agency in Germany. They discuss Amazon Alexa skill and Google Action adoption by brands and media in Europe, the challenges of language localization, how consumers view voice assistant technology, and similarities between voice today and the mobile app stores a decade ago. The duo founded 169 Labs shortly after winning an Alexa skill hackathon in 2017 and Tim was recently named an Alexa champion.
Voice Assistant Year in Review with Bouzid, Hewitson and Kaushansky - Voicebot Podcast Ep 74
A lot happened in voice assistant land in 2018. An all-star panel breaks it down for you this week with Ahmed Bouzid, CEO of Witlingo, Tom Hewitson from Labworks.io, and Karen Kaushansky of Robot Futures. We discuss the biggest stories of 2018, break down what Amazon, Google, and Apple did right and wrong this year, whether Samsung Bixby will succeed, and predictions for 2019. We also do a real-time Twitter poll on whether Google Duplex, the rapid expansion of voice assistant language support, E
Voice Assistant Adoption Beyond the Smart Speaker with Oren Jacob and Greg Hedges - Voicebot Podcast Ep 73
Oren Jacob is CEO and founder of PullString and Greg Hedges is Vice President of Emerging Experiences at RAIN Agency. In this episode, we break down the latest adoption data of voice assistants on and beyond the smart speaker. User adoption of voice assistants is actually higher on smartphones and in cars, we explore how that impacts brands, media, and enterprises while also exploring how consumers use them today. You can download the report at https://voicebot.ai/research and follow along with
Stuart Patterson CEO of LifePod Talks Proactive Voice and Assistants for Elders - Voicebot Podcast Ep 72
Stuart Patterson is CEO and co-founder of LifePod Solutions. The mission of the company is to transform how people care for their parents and other elders as they age in place. It is “2-way Alexa for the elderly,” and leverages what Patterson calls proactive voice. Prior to LifePod, Stuart was President and COO of Sidekicks which was a mobile app serving autistic children and their families. He also served as CEO of Xtone which enabled apps to add voice interaction. Going further back, Stuart wa
Nic Newman on Voice Assistant Adoption and the Media - Voicebot Podcast Ep 71
Nic Newman just completed a comprehensive study for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism about smart speaker adoption titled "The Future of Voice and the Implication for News.” The work includes consumer surveys in the U.S. and Europe, interviews with media outlets globally, and in-home consumer observation. Nic is a former journalist and now a media strategist with more than 30 years experience. Over his career, he was a BBC Newshour presenter, Editor, Producer, and reporter for r
Bixby from a Developer Perspective with Murphy, Kibbe and Haas - Voicebot Podcast Ep 70
Following up on our Podcast with Adam Cheyer (Ep 69), Samsung Bixby's engineering leader, I caught up with some developers and researchers that have worked with Bixby 2.0. We start off with Joe Murphy, founder of Vocalize.ai which is the leading benchmarking company for smart speaker performance. Then, Roger Kibbe, the best-in-show winner of Samsung Bixby Developer Showcase contest, breaks down how Bixby works from a developer perspective. He goes deep into how the Bixby NLU works, the dev envir
Adam Cheyer Co-Founder of Siri and Viv and Engineering Lead for Samsung Bixby - Voicebot Podcast Ep 69
Adam Cheyer is a co-founder of Siri and Viv. He is the technical leader and visionary behind the original Siri on the iPhone 4s and Bixby 2.0 which rolled out this year on Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9. I caught up with Adam at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco shortly after he presented an overview of Bixby’s new IDE for developers. We go back to the first digital assistant he developed while at Stanford Research Institute in the 1990’s and trace a 25-year path culminating this week i
Heidi Culbertson CEO of Marvee on Voice and the Elder Community - Voicebot Podcast Ep 68
Heidi Culbertson began her career in mobile technology solution sales for Sprint, USAT and Incode wireless. Her work in enterprise sales often required her to design solutions for companies adopting mobile for the first time. That led her to focus on user experience design for mobile followed by a move into consulting at AT&T and work as an independent UX consultant. Culbertson was drawn full time into voice in order to help her mother who suffered from macular degeneration. She quickly realized
Rishad Tobaccowala, Publicis Chief Growth Officer Talks Voice and Brands - Voicebot Podcast Episode 67
This week we have Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer of Publicis. Publicis is one of the three largest marketing agency holding companies worldwide with nearly 80,000 employees spread across more than 20 agencies. It was great to get a CXO perspective on how voice fits into the strategies of brands worldwide and what they should be doing now. We also discuss how different types of agencies work and how voice looks in comparison to previous tech and marketing trends brought on by the web, m
Voice UX Best Practices with Emerson Sklar of Applause - Voicebot Podcast Ep 66
Voicebot recently published the Voice UX Best Practices eBook. It is a 45-page masterclass in Voice UX that includes over 100 tips and recommendations from 17 industry experts gathered through dozens of hours of interviews. In this week's interview, I play audio clip highlights from some earlier podcasts and Emerson Sklar from Applause and I discuss the expert commentary and where it fits into the eBook. Featured experts include Ahmed Bouzid (Witlingo), Lisa Falkson (Amazon), Karen Kaushansky (R
Bill Cava Co-Founder of Orbita Talks Voice and Healthcare - Voicebot Podcast Ep 65
Bill Cava is the chief product officer and co-founder of Orbita, a voice technology company focused on healthcare. Orbita has worked with hospitals, senior care facilities, pharmaceuticals and companies in other industry segments to implement voice features into their patient / resident interactions and internal business processes. We discuss the triple aim objectives of healthcare providers and how the current delivery model frustrates those goals, but that voice offers some new opportunities t
Alexa Accelerator Interviews Class of 2018 (Jargon, Helix AI, Presence AI) - Voicebot Podcast Ep 64
Voicebot recently traveled to Seattle to meet with some of the company founders in the 2018 cohort of the Alexa Accelerator Powered by Techstars. I also had the opportunity to speak with the Alexa Accelerator's managing director, Aviel Ginzburg (3:54) about how the organization recruits new companies and how things have changed between year 1 and year 2. The three company CEO and founders interviewed include Milkana Brace (18:39) of Jargon, James Rhodes (28:30) of Helix AI and Michele Meyer (39:
Doug Schumacher Founder of Arrovox and the Voice Marketing Podcast - Voicebot Podcast Ep 63
Doug Schumacher is likely known to Voicebot listeners as either the host of the VoiceMarketing Podcast or creator of the satirical Homie & Lexy Podcast. He is the founder of Arrovox, a digital creative firm with a speciality that includes voice and marketing. During his career he has worked with clients ranging from Sony Pictures and EA Games to Pepsi and Mattel. Doug started his career as a writer at DDB Needham, TBWA/Chiat/Day and BBDO. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. We discus
Alexa Product Launch Event with Graham (USA Today), Jurran (CT) and Dastin (Reuters) - Voicebot Podcast Ep 62
Amazon held their now annual Alexa hardware event this past week in Seattle. Voicebot was onsite for demonstrations of 12 new Alexa products and 70 other announcements. Voicebot Podcast interviewed Jefferson Graham (USA Today), Nico Jurran (C'T Magazin in Germany), and Jeffrey Dastin (Reuters) to capture both the consumer (U.S. and Germany) and business perspectives (Reuters). If you want to hear from four people that were onsite, saw the demonstrations, and tried the devices first-hand, don't m
Omar Tawakol CEO of Voicera on Creating a Conversations Inbox - Voicebot Podcast Ep 61
Omar Tawakol is CEO and co-founder of Voicera which he says is creating a conversations inbox and system of record for meetings. The core solution is automated meeting transcription that also generates meeting notes with a highlights summary. Omar goes into detail about how the Ensemble service applies multiple speech recognition engines to address the meeting transcription challenge before applying AI to extract highlights. He earned a Masters degree in computer science from Stanford and engine
Adam Marchick CEO of Alpine AI Discusses Headspace Acquisition - Voicebot Podcast 60
Adam Marchick sat down to discuss his journey with Voice Labs and Alpine AI and the recent acquisition by Headspace. He breaks down the three phases of Voice Labs + Alpine (analytics, ad monetization, discovery) and why Headspace wanted to bring the company in house. We also go into Adam's experience in engineering and VC, how his internship at Facebook influences his approach to marketing, and how his previous company, Kahuna, influenced the approach he took wth Voice Labs. Adam earned both Com
Jeff Adams CEO of Cobalt and Former Alexa Team Lead - Voicebot Podcast Ep 59
Jeff Adams has spent more than two decades in the voice industry. During that time he worked for well recognized industry names that include Scansoft, Nuance and Amazon. At Nuance, he worked on the famous Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation software. At Amazon, Jeff led the original ASR and NLU teams for Alexa where he is also listed as the author on 21 patents. Just before Alexa’s launch, he left Amazon to start Cobalt Speech & Language which helps companies solve the biggest technical challeng
Nick Schwab of Invoked Apps Talks Alexa Skill Product Strategy - Voicebot Podcast Ep 58
Nick Schwab founded Invoked apps after building his first three Alexa skills in 2016. Within six months he had more sounds and was streaming 1 TB of data per day. Fifteen months later he has 41 sound skills plus a couple of games on both Alexa and Google Assistant that collectively generate 18 TB of streaming data each day. Invoked Apps also has the distinction of publishing the Alexa skill with the most user reviews, Ambient Sounds: Thunderstorm Sounds. That skill has over 13,700 user reviews a
Jess Williams of Opearlo Talks Consumer Alexa Skill Discovery Strategies - Voicebot Podcast Ep 57
Jess Williams is co-founder of Opearlo, a company that started out building Alexa skills for Unilever and other brands, but switched to building games and productivity skills for consumers in 2017. She goes into the story behind switching to become a product company focused around a single skill called LifeBot, designed to be your personal voice assistant concierge with many features, and then changing again to building multiple single-feature skills. Two years since founding Opearlo, the latest
Jan König Discusses the Jovo Open Source Framework for Voice App Development - Voicebot Podcast Ep 56
Jan König is co-founder and CEO of Jovo, the maker of an open source, context-first development framework. Context here refers to the device type such as smart speaker, smartphone, television, tablet and the like. The theory is that developers need to have centralized logic that can serve users across numerous devices with different underlying operating systems and across modes such as voice, visual, audio, video and text. Jovo has started with tools to support Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
John Kelvie CEO of Bespoken Discusses How Voice App Testing is Different - Voicebot Podcast Ep 55
John Kelvie is CEO and co-founder of Bespoken which provides voice app testing, monitoring and development software. Bespoken has over 1,000 users and apps on its testing platform including Mercedes Benz. John was a guest on Voicebot Podcast Ep 6 (well worth a listen) and the interview took place when the company was less than one year old. Now over two years since starting to develop the Bespoken voice app suite, the company has delivered a broad set of enterprise-class testing automation tools
Shane Mac CEO of Assist Says The Talking Internet is Here - Voicebot Podcast Ep 54
Shane Mac co-founded Assist five years ago with Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens. Since then, Assist has focused on enabling the talking internet for brands; first with chat bots, then with voice apps. Mac says the company's work centers around bookings, ordering and online to offline engagement use cases. The projects always involve backend systems integration. Whether it is taking beer orders at a baseball game on iMessage, selling flowers through Google Assistant or booking beauty appointme
Tom Hebner Global Innovation Head for Nuance Talks 20 Years in Voice - Voicebot Podcast Ep 53
Tom Hebner is the Global Head of Innovation at Nuance Communications. He has been at the company since 1999 by way of acquisition in 2008, so has had a front-row seat to observe the evolution of voice technology in the modern era. He spent most of his early career in voice user experience design before moving into cloud and innovation groups. Tom earned an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Villanova and Masters in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Princeton. We talk v
Pulse Labs Founders Talk Voice App Testing and Alexa Accelerator - Voicebot Podcast Ep 52
Pulse Labs co-founders Abhishek Suthan (CEO) and Dylan Zwick (CPO) brought their crowdsourced voice app testing service into the first Alexa Accelerator class operated by TechStars in 2017. Since then, they have assembled hundreds of pre-screened voice app testers and provided UX feedback to nearly a hundred voice apps on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Along they way, the company raised $2.5 million from venture funds at both Amazon and Google and Jeff Bezos' personal investment fund. Abhish
Rand Hindi CEO of Snips Talks Independent Voice Assistants, Privacy, Block Chain and ICO - Voicebot Podcast 51
Rand Hindi is co-founder and CEO of Snips.ai. He is the former CEO of Hinran, a web development agency and a co-founder of PlanetUltra, the first social network in France. Immediately prior to founding Snips, Rand was a freelance Data Scientist focused on Machine Learning and Algorithmic trading. He also is into quantified self and did an AI-driven diet experiment that used machine learning to gain 80 pounds and then lose it again. Today, Snips is building an independent voice assistant designed
Voice Shopping Panel - Brian Colcord and Ryan MacInnis of Voysis plus Kinsella and Mutchler - Voicebot Podcast Ep 50
This 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
Adva Levin Founder of Pretzel Labs Talks Voice-First Games - Voicebot Podcast Ep 49
Adva Levin is founder of Pretzel Labs, a Tel Aviv-based company that creates voice-first games that children can play through Amazon Echo and soon Google Home. The company came to prominence earlier this year as the Grand Prize winner of Amazon’s first Kids Skills Competition where developers competed for cash prizes for the best Alexa skill designed for children. Previously, Adva worked in product and content roles at a number of startups and has also done literary translation and screenwriting
Mycroft AI CEO Joshua Montgomery Talks Open Source Voice Assistant - Voicebot Podcast Ep 48
Joshua Montgomery founded Mycroft AI in early 2015 and since that time has done two successful Kickstarter campaigns, graduated from both Tech Stars and 500 Startups accelerators, raised $3 million in equity capital and delivered the world's first open source voice assistant. And, there is the new subsidiary that has a blockchain solution called Mykrosystem. Josh discusses the importance of independent voice assistants for both consumers and enterprises. He also offers insight on his latest fund
Voice AI First Half 2018 Review - All Star Panel - Voicebot Podcast Ep 47
This 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 Mutchl
Novel Effect Founders Use Voice and Sound to Enhance Story Time and More - Voicebot Podcast Ep 46
Melissa and Matthew Hammersley co-founded Novel Effect in 2015 to use voice recognition combined with sound effects to enhance story time for parents and children. Since that time they have appeared on Shark Tank, completed the first edition of the Alexa Accelerator, closed a $3 million funding round, launched an iOS app, closed deals with major publishers and expanded their application set beyond stories to other use cases. Melissa is the former owner of Figure One Design and is now Chief Desig
Noelle LaCharite of Microsoft Cognitive Services Talks AI and Building Voice Models - Voicebot Podcast Ep 45
Noelle LaCharite recently moved to Microsoft Cognitive Services after many years at Amazon including a role leading a machine learning team as a senior architect for Alexa. We sat down shortly after the annual Microsoft BUILD conference where the Cognitive Services group announced several new features and the Cortana team demonstrated integration with Alexa. In this week's interview, we cover the recent Microsoft news and its impact for developers building for Alexa and Google Assistant, how Noe
Voice SEO Explained by Stone Temple CEO Eric Enge - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 44
Today’s guest is an expert in traditional SEO from the web and mobile and has done some of the most interesting research to date on voice SEO. Eric Enge founded Stone Temple in 2002 and the agency has won awards ranging from Best SEO Agency of the Year to Search Marketer of the Year. He is co-author of the popular book The Art of SEO, has served as a columnist in many leading publications, and co-authored an academic research paper published by the International Journal of Scientific Research an
Google Assistant Developer Panel, Jochen Emig CTO Onsei and Michael Myers CPO XAPmedia - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 43
This week's episode is all about Google Assistant. Experienced Google Assistant developers Jochen Emig, CTO of Onsei, and Michael Myers, Chief Product Officer of XAPPmedia, discuss the most important features added to the platform over the past year and react to the new announcements from Google I/O. We talk Action Links, Monetization, Continued Conversation, Dialogflow, Google Duplex and much more. They even weigh in on differences from Alexa. Don't miss this episode. A lot of depth here from p
John Foster, CEO of Aiqudo, Talks Voice Enabling Mobile Apps - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 42
John Foster is CEO of Aiqudo, a company he cofounded in March 2017. Aiqudo was developed to help people do more things, more quickly. It is a virtual assistant designed for mobile devices and voice enables apps by making their actions accessible through simple voice commands. The company recently announced a partnership with Motorola where Aiqudo now serves as the brains behind the Hello Moto assistant. John is the former CEO of mobile search company Quixey, CEO of DHI and President of Zed. He w
SoundHound CEO Keyvan Mohajer Discusses the Hound Voice Assistant and $100 Million Funding Round - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 41
Keyvan Mohajer is co-founder and CEO of Soundhound, known for the app that will tell you in seconds what song is playing. The company is becoming even more famous for inventing the Hound voice assistant that is designed to rival Google Assistant and Alexa, but enable app owners to maintain control of the user experience and data. Keyvan talks about founding SoundHound in 2004 while earning his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, growing the Hound platform to over 60,000 developers and goe
The Elements of Multi-Modal Design with Karen Kaushansky - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 40
Karen Kaushansky started as a speech technology designer at Nortel in the mid-1990’s and moved on to become a voice user interface designer at Nuance. Later she worked at Tellme and in experience design at Microsoft and Jawbone. Karen co-founded a smart clothing company, Sensilk and more recently founded Robot Futures Consulting where she has worked with self-driving car company NIO and toy maker Lego. Karen earned degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo and c
Alexa Developer Panel with Octavio Menocal and Eric Olson - Voicebot Podcast Ep. 39
Amazon has added a lot of features to Alexa Skills Kit over the past year. Voicebot asked two of the most experienced Alexa developers to weigh in on some of the biggest feature additions. Octavio Menocal has developed over 70 Alexa skills both personally and with RAIN Agency. Eric Olson is an Alexa Champion who built some of the first popular Alexa skills and has worked closely with the Alexa developer evangelist team. We discuss the intent history API, notifications, location, lists, video pla
Chris Messina Founder of Molly Talks Personalized Assistants - Voicebot Podcast Episode 38
Chris Messina is co-founder of the company that makes the personalized virtual assistant Molly. He is a frequent conference speaker and commentator on chatbots and voice assistants and sees Molly as both a tool for individuals and as a vehicle to connect people through a new social assistant model. A former developer experience lead at Uber, developer advocate and UX designer at Google, Chris was also previously a board member of the OpenID and Open Web foundations. Chris is probably best known
Storyline CEO Vasili Shynkarenka - Voicebot Podcast Episode 37
Vasili Shynkarenka is co-founder and CEO of Storyline, the company dedicated to making it easy for anyone to create an Amazon Alexa skill without coding. Vasili started working with conversational interfaces in 2015 as a co-founder, chatbot UX designer and algorithm developer. He later became CEO of Botcube, a chat based applications development firm located in Belarus. Earlier in his career, he was a web developer focused on CMS for news and blogging. Storyline just emerged from the Y Combinato
Volley Founders Max Child and James Wilsterman - Voicebot Podcast Episode 36
Max Child and James Wilsterman are co-founders of Volley, a company that makes games for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. The Volley games Song Quiz and Yes Sire currently hold the number 1 and 2 rankings on Alexa. Volley also recently graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 program and has raised over $1 million in seed funding. Max was formerly an iOS developer, journalist and worked for Boston Consulting Group. James was a co-founder of Streak Trivia which held once-a-day trivia tournamen
Stas Tushinskiy CEO Instreamatic Talks Ad Monetization for Voice - Voicebot Podcast Episode 35
Stas Tushinskiy is CEO and co-founder of Instreamatic.ai. The company today delivers audio ads that consumers can interact with by voice on mobile and hopes to do the same on smart speakers when the voice assistant platforms update their advertising policies. Instreamatic was recently named a finalist for the Accelerator Pitch award at South by Southwest. Stas previously founded Unisound which developed audio advertising technology for streaming music services. He also has a background in eComme
Smart Speaker Adoption Data Review, PullString and RAIN Weigh In - Episode 34 Voicebot Podcast
Voicebot, 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
Voicebot Podcast Episode 33 - Mark Webster CEO Sayspring
Mark Webster is the CEO and Founder of Sayspring. Founded in 2016, Sayspring offers online software that allows anyone to quickly create interactive prototypes for voice applications on Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Mark is a designer by training and experience and earned a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. He worked early in his career for the NBA's entertainment division, has worked with several other digital media broadcast companies including Intercast Networks
Voicebot Podcast Episode 32 - Dr. Ahmed Bouzid CEO of Witlingo
Ahmed Bouzid is founder and CEO of Witlingo, a company that helps brands, non-profits and other organizations ranging from The Motley Fool and Berlitz to AARP and a successful Virginia Gubernatorial candidate create voice enabled apps. Ahmed has more than 20 years experience working in speech technology. He worked on the early version of Alexa while at Amazon, was a product leader at Angel.com and even built a natural language voice assistant in the 1990’s. He has a Masters Degree in computer sc
Voicebot Podcast Episode 31 - Tractica Principal Analyst Mark Beccue
Mark Beccue is principal analyst at market research firm Tractica and recently published a report revealing that the virtual digital assistant software market is nearly $1 billion today and will grow to over $7.7 billion in 2025. The forecast is a bottom-up analysis of hundreds of virtual assistant use cases and we talk about which segments will generate the most software revenue. Mark also goes into detail on Tractica's broader coverage of the AI market as well as chatbots and voice assistants.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 30 - Cathy Pearl Author of Designing Voice User Interfaces
Cathy Pearl is best known as the author of Designing Voice User Interfaces published by O'Reilly Media. She is currently Vice President of User Experience at Sensely, worked previously at Nuance, was on the Ford Sync team and holds degrees in both Computer Science and Cognitive Science. Cathy even worked at NASA early in her career where she designed user controls that reduced cognitive load for pilots. She has a lot of hands-on voice design experience, is viewed as an authority in the field and
Voicebot Podcast Episode 29 - Tobias Goebel of Aspect Software Discusses Computational Linguistics and Bot Design
Tobias Goebel is Senior Director, Emerging Technologies for Aspect Software. He has a Masters Degree in Computational Linguistics and has studied at both the University of Bonn and University of Edinburgh. Tobias also has 15 years experience working in voice technology, first as a developer, then as a designer and more recently as a strategist and marketer. Aspect has a big focus on customer service and contact center automation. Chat and voice are now a rapidly growing part of that work, but th
Voicebot Podcast Episode 28 - Tim McElreath of Scripps (Food Network) Talks Multimodal Design
Tim McElreath is Director of Engineering, Mobile and Emerging Platforms at Scripps which among other things owns Food Network and HGTV. Food Network not only has one of the best voice-first Alexa skills and Google Assistant apps, but also represents one of the finest multi-modal deployments that takes advantage of the Amazon Echo Show’s screen to display Food Networks' extensive video library. Tim holds a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and was a developer for much of his career.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 27 - Steven Hansen RAIN Agency
Steven Hansen is the CTO of RAIN Agency. RAIN is well known for its more than 30 Alexa skills launched for high profile brands ranging from Tide, Hellmans and Campbell's Soup to Sesame Street and the big budget World War II movie Dunkirk. The company learned something new in each deployment and Steven shares some of the wisdom he and his colleagues have accumulated. He also talks about the company's Reverb app which enables hundreds of thousands of users to add Alexa to their mobile devices and
Voicebot Podcast Episode 26 - All About Bot Analytics with Dashbot CEO Arte Merritt
Voice assistants and chatbots have ushered in a new UI and interaction model for consumers. Conversational interactions are very different from the structured interfaces we built previously for web and mobile. The analytics and type of data make this clear according to Arte Merritt, CEO of Dashbot.io. Dashbot has analyzed over 22 billion conversational messages from thousands of chatbots and voice apps so the observations are rooted in data. In addition, Merritt has a long history of analytics,
Voicebot Podcast Episode 25 - CES 2018 Recap with All-Star Panel
The consumer electronics show (CES) is visited annually by 180 thousand people and many of the big names in tech have a large presence. CES 2017 was largely regarded as a triumph for Amazon Alexa and was instrumental in raising awareness about voice assistants and how they will fit into the future lives of everyday consumers. It is fair to say that CES 2018 put voice technology on display in an even bigger way with Amazon joined by Google, Samsung, Sony, LG, Toyota, Hyundai and just about every
Voicebot Podcast Episode 24 - Todd Mozer CEO Sensory
Todd Mozer is Chairman and CEO of Sensory. He founded the company in 1994 to enable people to communicate with consumer electronics the way we do with each other. Sensory builds software and hardware products for voice recognition, biometric identification and more. Voice is the biggest part of Sensory’s portfolio and Todd has over a dozen patents in speech technology. Sensory was pioneering the use of neural networks in the 1990's and works today with companies ranging from AT&T and Huawei to G
Voicebot Podcast Episode 23 - Owen Brown CTO of Starbutter
Owen Brown is co-founder and CTO of Starbutter AI which works at the intersection of virtual assistants and financial products. Starbutter is a leading developer on both Google Assistant and Facebook Messenger. The company's current conversational apps help consumers choose financial products with the best features. Starbutter's Credit Card Helper won awards in four categories of the 2017 Actions on Google Developer Challenge and was the largest prize money winner. Learn about choosing the right
Voicebot Episode 22 - 2017 Voice Assistant Year in Review
A lot happened in 2017 related to voice assistants. Voice app growth, rapid consumer adoption, monetization, smart speakers vs voice assistants on smartphones, the YouTube kerfuffle, the Google Home Mini recording fiasco, will.i.am raising over $100 million and much more. We even conclude the episode with predictions for 2018. I am joined by three industry experts: Adam Marchick CEO of VoiceLabs, Nick Schwab Founder of Invoked Apps, Ava Mutchler Associate Editor of Voicebot.ai. Great conversatio
Voicebot Podcast Episode 21 - Oren Jacob CEO Pullstring
Oren Jacob is co-founder and CEO of Pullstring. Founded in 2011, Pullstring is maker of Converse, an enterprise SaaS platform for building, deploying and maintaining conversational apps. Oren discusses how his 20-year career making movies at Pixar influences his approach to voice app and multimodal design. He goes into how the company started, how things were different before Amazon Echo, how the kids in his neighborhood were his original focus group and what he learned from working on high prof
Voicebot Podcast Episode 20 - Derrick Fountain of TRT World News Media Talks Voice AI from Turkey
TRT World is a global news media organization headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey. Derrick Fountain oversees TRT World's product and R&D group and has led the launch of three Alexa skills and Google Assistant apps. TRT World has a news-based voice app as you might expect, but Derrick's team has also built two games that reinforce the company's mission around news and its brand. One of them recently won an award from Google. The apps all have high production quality with professional voice recordin
Voicebot Podcast Episode 19 - Matt Hartman, Partner at Betaworks on Voice Tech Investing and Startups
Matt Hartman is a partner at Betaworks, a venture fund and innovation firm. Betaworks has made several investments in voice technology and recently hosted the 12-week Voicecamp Accelerator that helped incubate eight startups in tools and entertainment categories. Matt also has a popular voice technology newsletter called Hearing Voices. In this week's interview, Matt talks about voice technology segments, consumer use cases and investing in the space.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 18 - Shane Mac CEO Assist
Shane Mac is CEO and co-founder of Assist which provides a voice and chatbot platform for brands looking to engage consumers. The platform works across multiple voice and chat services including Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Shane recounts how he first started in voice four years ago and the lessons learned working with brands ranging from Sephora and Hyatt to Fandango and 1-800-Flowers.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 17 - Peter Nann, Voice UX from an Australian Perspective
Peter Nann is the speech and automation lead at Salmat and has worked in speech technology since 1993. He started as a software developer and by 2001 was a senior voice user interface architect. His focus today is voice design, analysis and improving existing voice systems. In this week's interview, Peter recounts the evolution of voice user experience over more than 20 years, offers some tips on designing for voice and provides an overview of the voice assistant technology landscape in Australi
Voicebot Podcast Episode 16 - David Watkins of Strategy Analytics
David Watkins is Service Director for Connected Home Devices at research firm Strategy Analytics, and is one of the leading analysts tracking the voice assistant and smart speaker markets. David takes a data-first approach to analyzing adoption of Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod, Alibaba Tmall Genie and dozens of other smart speakers under development by software companies, device manufacturers and telcos. He also brings a global perspective covering U.S., Europe and Asian adoption patte
Voicebot Podcast Episode 15 - Hicham Tahiri CEO Smartly.ai
Hicham Tahiri is the founder and CEO of Smartly.ai. While Hicham started as an embedded systems engineer, he began his job as a voice user interface designer way back in 2006 and has spent most of his career focused on voice technology. He later founded what became Smartly in 2011 to help companies building robots and cars integrate speech recognition and interaction into their solutions. When Amazon Echo was launched along with the Alexa Skills Kit in 2015, Smartly began creating Alexa skills
Voicebot Podcast Episode 14 - Brad Abrams, Google Assistant Group Product Manager
Brad Abrams is Group Product Manager for Google Assistant. He takes time in this interview to share experiences from the first year of the voice assistant platform. From the launch of Google Assistant on Google Home and smartphones, to the expansion into seven different countries with more on the way, Brad shares some surprises and little known facts about the platform. He also answers questions related to voice SEO, voice commerce, multi-modal development, expansion into new languages and much
Voicebot Podcast Episode 13 - Jan König, CEO of Jovo
Jan König is CEO of Jovo, a company providing a framework and tools for building robust multi-modal apps that include voice. Along with Alex Swetlow, Jan founded Jovo in 2017, recently graduated from Betaworks Voicecamp accelerator and released the company's first product. Jan discusses how he and Alex came to their idea for Jovo and the premise behind building voice-first apps that are consistent, continuous and complementary across UI surfaces -- yes multi-modal 101. We also talk about Amazon
Voicebot Podcast Episode 12 - David Beisel of NextView Ventures
David is a partner and co-founder at NextView Ventures. The firm just raised a new $50 million fund for seed stage investments in the Everyday Economy. In this interview, David Beisel talks about super technologies, innovation waves, how voice and AI will play a role in the things we do every day and three strategies for driving discovery of a new Alexa skill. David previously published a voice computing map that highlighted multiple sectors of voice technology and shares his thoughts on whether
Voicebot Podcast Episode 11 - Pat Higbie XAPPmedia CEO
Pat Higbie is CEO and co-founder of XAPPmedia which delivers voice interactive apps and managed services for media and brands looking to connect with consumers on Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana or other platforms. Pat has worked in voice technology for a decade and co-founded XAPP in 2012, well before Amazon Echo launched. The company first worked with mobile audio apps to voice enable their content discovery and ads. Pat says, this is why the company originally built its plat
Voicebot Podcast Episode 10 - Peter Cahill CEO of Voysis
Peter Cahill has been working in voice technology for 15 years. He has a PhD. in Text-to-Speech, was a professor of speech technology at the University of Dublin and more recently founded speech technology platform, Voysis. Voysis raised $8 million in VC funding in February 2017 and has offices in Dublin, Boston and Edinburgh. While Peter expects Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri will have great success in many consumer applications, he founded Voysis to provide businesses with a flexible
Voicebot Podcast Episode 9 - Leading Alexa Game Developer Jo Jaquinta
Jo Jaquinta has been a developer for 20 years and started developing games for Amazon Alexa in 2015. Since that time, he has written two books on voice application development for Alexa and become a leading game developer on both the Alexa and Google Assistant platforms. Jo shares what he has learned about designing games for voice, developing within current constraints, options for monetization and even how the Alexa reward payout structure works today.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 8 - Bryan Moffett of National Public Media
Bryan Moffett is COO of National Public Media, a subsidiary of audio content powerhouse NPR. NPR began working with voice interaction on mobile in 2014, was embedded as news in the early days of Alexa but really began to focus on the potential of voice assistants when they served 500k users on Christmas day in 2016. Bryan talks about NPR's strategy and what they learned from the most in-depth ethnographic study and survey about how people use Amazon Echo and Google Home today.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 7 - Life Bot Founders Jess Williams and Oscar Merry
Jess Williams and Oscar Merry started working with Amazon Alexa in 2015 while at Accenture and then left to start their own London-based digital agency dedicated to voice, Opearlo. After working with Unilever and other big brands they passed the reigns to a colleague, founded a new company called Life Bot and joined the Y Combinator Accelerator. Jess and Oscar have learned a lot about building voice apps on Alexa and Google Assistant for brands and consumers and they share their insights with th
Voicebot Podcast Episode 6 - John Kelvie of Bespoken
John Kelvie is a veteran of voice interaction on mobile and an early developer for voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Seeing a lack of sophisticated developer and monitoring tools for voice, John founded Bespoken to make voice applications easier to build, maintain and improve. His efforts have already received an endorsement from both Amazon and Google. John covers his view on voice application development, the state of AI and the likely market trajectory for the industry.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 5 - Dan Whaley on Voice UX in the UK
Dan Whaley talks about how Alexa development is coming along in the UK and demonstrates some Alexa skills to point out strengths and weaknesses of voice UX design.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 4 - Alexa Developer and Author Quentin Delaoutre
Quentin Delaoutre is a leading Amazon Alexa Developer from France. He is the creator of Jab, the first messaging Alexa skill, the AlexaSkillsStore.com and author of Amazon Alexa Ultimate User Guide. In this interview, Quentin talks about building voice applications, why he chose to focus on messaging and some of the things he's learned along the way.
Voicebot Podcast Episode 3 - Voice UX Expert Lisa Falkson
Lisa Falkson is the Principal Voice UX Architect at self-driving car startup NIO and also serves as an advisor to Witlingo, a voice technology design and development startup. She previously worked at Amazon's famous Lab126 as a Senior Voice User Interface Designer where she helped launch three voice enabled products in 2014, including Amazon Echo. An electrical engineer trained originally at Stanford and later earning an MSEE from UCLA, Lisa started her career as a software developer at Sun Micr
Voicebot Podcast Episode 2 - Independent Developer, Nick Schwab
Just as independent developers helped drive smartphone usage with apps for iOS and Android, they are also key to keeping consumers engaged on smart speakers and other voice platforms. Nick Schwab is one of the earliest developers on both the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant platforms. His top three skills on Amazon have over 1,000 reviews when most applications struggle to receive five. And, he is sending out over 7TB of streaming data daily to his large user base. Learn more about how develope
Voicebot Podcast Episode 1 - The Upstart, SoundHound
There is a lot of focus on the big voice platforms from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple, but what about the independent platforms that will challenge the status quo? Voicebot sat down with SoundHound's Katie McMahon to hear about a different approach to voice engagement. Whereas the big platforms set their own rules and you are along for the ride, Hound is offering creators control over their content and user relationships.