Debunking the myth of feature discovery in voice interfaces

There's no such thing as "The Feature Discovery Problem" in voice, says Ahmed Bouzid, CEO of Witlingo and former head of product at Amazon Alexa.

This is a myth that stems from a misunderstanding over how to deliver usable voicefirst experiences. [Glean.info]

• Two day event: August 5-6, 2020, Harvard Medical School
• As a result of distancing and other constraints, seating is extremely limited. Get your ticket now.

9 BIG voice fundraising rounds this month

• $10M for social media app, Clubhouse. $40M for US-based conversational AI startup Paradox. Alibaba committed $1.4B invested into T-mall genie. Check out the rest of the list. [Voice & You]

The sound marketing landscape

• Jeanna Isham takes stock of the leading brands and talking heads in the voice marketing space right now. [Dreamrproductions]

Adapting to change: How conversational AI delivers opportunities

• Covid-19 has changed the voice space. Take a look back at how industries have survived previous global shocks, and discover how businesses are now using conversational AI to differentiate themselves. [Artificial Solutions]

Boundless EP44: AI-Human-AI. The future is conversational

• I appeared on the fantastic Boundless podcast, hosted by Richard Foster-Fletcher.
• We discussed how conversations between humans and artificial intelligence can unlock new opportunities in society and business, as AI grows more competent and compassionate.

How to use podcasts to reinforce your brand storytelling

• How can digital audio fit into your marketing? One major way is brand storytelling with podcasts. [Voice Tech]

Create your own audio course

• Record, launch, and start monetizing your audio courses in less than an hour, all in one place [Avid.fm]

Alexa isn’t right for care, not yet anyway…

• Frustrating and complex interactions can have serious consequences in the health and care sectors. One social care report even found ‘Alexa’s robotic voice leaving dementia patients ‘deeply distressed’'. [EveryLIFE Technologies]

Can’t we just talk?

• Imagine a world where each of us has a career companion that knows us inside out, and finds us jobs that we're most likely to excel at. [Wilson Wong]

Become a Certified Conversation Designer - 25% off

• Learn to write natural dialogue for chatbots and voice assistants from the experts who define the standard.
• 80+ video lectures, examples, quizzes, templates and exclusive alumni community.
• Official exam certificate shows clients & employers you're highly trained.
• Voice Techies get 25% off the list price for a limited time

Recipes for building an open-domain chatbot

• "This paper studies in depth the performance of a chatbot based on the Transformer. It shows that it’s able to respond in a human-like way, and it’s able to maintain a chit chat conversation.
• However, the authors also show that the model lacks in-depth knowledge, it forgets facts stated before and it tends to repeat what the other speaker is saying." [Dair.ai]

Emotion control of ultra-realistic TTS voice

• Try the demo editor to change the emotional expression of individual words and sentences. It's not quite WaveNet quality, but the flexibility is awesome. [AMAI.io]

[Tutorial] Diagnosing COVID-19 with Alexa

• Build an Alexa Skill to perform an at-home diagnosis of COVID-19, using a question-answer interview. [Harry]