| Voice assistants, chat bots etc. are all premature technologies that are dying slow deaths. The primary reason is quality control. The way these devices are tested can never truly represent the massive variation which would impact their ability to process and parse sound. For example, the wide range of accents for a language like English. The variations in ambient noise in real world environments etc. Beyond that, generative language models have only recently become powerful, but they need server side processing which is incredibly expensive for the majority of contexts where an AI is useful. Think of call centers. I HATE when companies try to use voice AI in call centers, thinking it's a good way to save money. Bank Call Center Phone Cal example: Voice AI: "tell me, how can I help?"
Me: "I'd like to request my final statements for a recently closed account."
Voice AI: "I'm not sure I heard that correctly"
Me: "Statements for a closed account"
Voice AI: "Do you want to close an account?"
Me: "Statements"
Voice AI: "I'm not sure I can help with that, let me get you to a customer care representative. Please enter or say your 16 digit account number" What was the point of that? The vast majority of customers know how to use online banking to get information at this point. Why did you make me do this? And then, imagine I get disconnected and need to call back. Go through the same process again. The bank may have saved some money (questionable, as they have already outsourced the call center anyway to somewhere cheap), but they've irked me so much, I'm always ready to switch. To bad all banks are the same where I live. Point being, the tech is too premature, unfinished and hard to build and it offers questionable value. Voice AI is mostly useful in situations where I need to be handsfree. I think what SoundHound is doing makes the most sense. Sell your Voice AI as an API to manufacturers who build good quality speakers. Everything else is pointless right now. |