A 2020 Pew Research study even found that 36% of parents said their child under the age of 12 uses a voice assistant, including 14% of children aged 0-2. With a myriad of capabilities, these virtual assistants can practically become members of the family-conveying information, telling jokes, and controlling home appliances. Products such as Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and Cortana have quickly become household names, controlling all but one percent of the voice assistant market. With digital assistants expected to outnumber humans within the next three years, AI integration in the home is on an upswing, especially in the form of voice assistants: AI devices enabled with speech recognition and vocal response technology. Spike Jonze’s 2013 film “Her”, in which a man falls in love with his computer’s female-sounding, voice-enabled software, is quickly feeling less like a work of science fiction and more like an increasingly-realistic premonition. The Cupertino tech giant’s acquisition of Voysis could be the start of a long journey for the company in terms of developing a human-like interface.Research Intern, Center for Technology Innovation - The Brookings Institution However, Siri is a work in progress and still needs a lot of things to be perfect. This could be due to the massively improved backend processing. In its most recent build, Siri not only sounds more human but is also smarter in recognizing natural language commands. More so, when Apple rolled out the iOS 13. Since it was first introduced in 2011, Apple has incrementally advanced the speech output of Siri. These are mere speculations since Apple has not disclosed its plan with Voysis, although Siri is a standard fit. Also, the Cupertino tech giant could offer Voysis’ platform to developers who integrate with Apple’s Siri.
We believe Voysis is the complete voice AI platform that will play a key role in bringing about this change.”Īccording to the publication, Voysis could be crucial to Apple to improve its digital assistant’s understanding of natural language. We believe that voice-driven natural language interfaces will change the way people interact with consumer and enterprise facing applications by creating more intuitive, efficient, and personalized experiences. The LinkedIn bio of Voysis reads, “At Voysis, we believe voice will soon be the first point of contact between ‘man’ and machine.
In 2018, Voysis founder Peter Cahill noted that the company was able to shrink its system, and once the AI is trained, the software only utilizes as little as 26 MB of memory.įuture iPhones can be expected to have better AR capabilities. The system of Voysis uses Wavenets, which was developed by Google DeepMind a few years ago. Voysis offered this Artificial Intelligence to other businesses so they could integrate it on their respective voice assistants and apps. Based on the startup’s official website (now removed), the technology could trim down product search results by processing shopping terms and phrases. According to the report, the Irish AI startup has been on its toes, enhancing digital assistants in applications to understand more advanced requests better. The company is an Artificial Intelligence startup, which could be crucial for Apple in improving Siri’s capability of understanding natural languages. Today, Bloomberg reports that Apple purchased the AI startup Voysis. Recently, it acquired the popular hyper-local app Dark Sky. Apple has not yet revealed its plan with Voysis but tech enthusiasts believe it has something to do with Apple's digital assistantĪmid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cupertino giant Apple is busy buying startups.The AI startup company is based in Ireland and could reportedly help the company improve Siri.