Speech Technology eWeekly - April 10, 2019

Features

The State of Assistive Technology

The market for assistive tech is growing, but pain points still exist

The State of Artificial Intelligence

Training AI and machine learning leads to big gains and increased adoption

The State of Voice Biometrics

Voice biometrics is becoming popular with big corporations but is still out of reach for many

Q & A

Q&A: Dahl and Normandin Explore Conversational Technology Platforms

At the 2019 SpeechTEK conference Yves Normandin of Nu Echo, Inc. and Deborah Dahl of Conversational Technologies, will present "A Comprehensive Guide to Technologies for Conversational Systems." Conference chair Jim Larson talked to Normandin and Dahl to get a sneak peek of the session, and learn about conversational system technologies.

Q&A: Bruce Balentine on Discoverability and VUI

At the 2019 SpeechTEK Conference (April 29-May 1), Bruce Balentine, design consultant specializing in speech, audio, and multimodal user interfaces, will be presenting "Discoverability in Spoken user Interfaces." Conference Chair Jim Larson interviewed Balentine to get a sneak peek at the session and talk about discoverability.

Speech Technology News

Google Introduces All-neural, On-device Speech Recognizer to Power Speech Input in Gboard

Google revealed that it has made spoken to written text translation available offline for Gboard users.

Providence St. Joseph Health Makes Same-Day Express Care Appointment Scheduling Available On Amazon Alexa

With the voice request, "Alexa, open Providence Health Connect," or "Alexa, open Swedish Health Connect," consumers can schedule Express Care appointments.

Walmart Voice Order Comes to Google Assistant

Walmart is getting into the voice shopping game! Last week the company announced Walmart Voice Order with Google Assistant, a direct challenge to Amazon's dominance in the voice shopping world.

Amazon Says Semi-Supervised Learning Builds Better Speech Recognition

Amazon reveals how it developed an acoustic model for Alexa, and used semi-supervised learning to improve speech recognition.

Yappa Debuts First Audio/Video Social Commenting Tool to Encourage Less Toxic Online Interactions

Free new plugin makes it fun and easy for site visitors to use voice or video to record quick comments.

Two Mics Are Better than Seven According to Amazon

In a post on its Alexa blog, Amazon says it has developed a different acoustic modeling framework. Amazon says it can boosts performance by unifying speech enhancement and speech recognition.

SoapBox Labs and Microsoft Announce Partnership to Tackle Childhood Literacy

SoapBox Labs AI-driven speech recognition technology combined with Microsoft's Global Cloud Infrastructure aims to address international education gap.

Industry Voices

How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Human Resource Departments

The human resources (HR) function has seen many transformations over the years but the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the workplace presents challenges and opportunities to the profession.