Vancouver interactive voice tech startup Picovoice announced this week that it is making its wake word models for Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant free for companies to license.
Prior to Picovoice, enterprises seeking to build voice products had to choose between closed ecosystems with limited flexibility or creating and maintaining their own voice stack.
Picovoice wants to provide an alternative option and is an end-to-end platform that lets you build voice products on your terms.
“Purpose-made and branded voice assistants are the next logical step in the evolution of voice as an interface. These agents may co-exist with generalist assistants such as Alexa, Google, and Siri. It is with this vision of an open and interoperable future that Picovoice decided to make wake word models freely available for all major voice assistants.”
Picovoice Console empowers developers to create custom wake words within hours rather than weeks. Using the Picovoice Console, users can create voice experiences similar to Alexa and Google. And unlike these services, models created using Picovoice Console can run entirely on-device while being more accurate.
According to GeekWire, Picovoice has raised a $500,000 round from Founders’ Co-op. The Seattle firm was an investor in fellow voice tech startup Kitt.ai of Seattle.
Kitt.ai had developed a framework to build and power chatbots and voice-based applications across multiple platforms and devices and was acquired by Chinese search giant Baidu.
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