Audio is buzzing throughout the venture capital world right now. Andreesen Horowitz recently led a $100 million funding round for Clubhouse, an audio-based social networking platform. There are now over 100 monthly podcast subscribers for the first time. The investor interest in audio has coincided with breakthroughs in NLP technology: Automated speech recognition technology can now reach 95% accuracy.

Sensory, a speech technology company, is attempting to lower the barrier to entry for innovation in voice-based products, releasing VoiceHub, a tool for developers to integrate speech tools into their products.

What does VoiceHub Do?

VoiceHub is a Voice User Interface (VUI) creation platform that streamlines the addition of voice control features into products. VoiceHub is focused on wake words, the words that activate a device, and voice controlled commands. The new feature can support dozens of languages according to the company site. 

Source: Sensory.com

Todd Mozer, CEO of Sensory, noted in an interview with Biometric Update how the accessibility of VoiceHub—the software is low code and being offered completely for free—will lead to innovation in the audio space.

“Providing free access to flexible tools like VoiceHub helps to accelerate the next wave of branded voice experiences and domain-specific, customized voice assistants,” said Mozer. “[Our technology] empowers designers to develop more complex and truly conversational voice interfaces with the capability of handling millions of unique phrases.”

Traction and Future Outlook

The company’s decision to launch the product follows a successful beta, which VoiceHub announced in October. The product is integrated with Sensory’s TrulyNatural speech recognition platform and is available online and in both the Android and iOS app stores.

For one of the companies that participated in the beta, STMicroelectronics, a Swiss semiconductor manufacturer that generates over $10 billion in revenue per year, VoiceHub has already made a significant impact. With VoiceHub, “developers are able to design working prototypes of natural language-capable products in a manner of minutes, not days, dramatically reducing their time to market,” said Daniel Colonna, Marketing Director at STMicroelectronics Microcontrollers, in an interview with MobileIDWorld.

STMicroelectronics’ strong endorsement is notable given that the major industry player only used VoiceHub’s beta version. Given the positive reviews on VoiceHub’s technology and the industry tailwinds as consumers demand high-functioning voice-activated products, we will be closely monitoring VoiceHub in the years to come.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Quinn Barry is a Tech Innovation Fellow from Stanford University covering innovations in digital privacy across finance and government.

Contact Quinn Barry at quinn@identityreview.com.

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