3 Ways Improved Speech & Text Realism is Here Today

Published in

Speaking Naturally

4 min readMar 6, 2019

Those of you who have seen my talks know that I often find a way to fit in information about Microsoft’s extraordinary social chatbot, Xiaoice (“shi-OW-ice”) that serves hundreds of millions of users across Asia today. Today I’m happy to share an article we found on their detailed design. Very useful for a glimpse of the future.

CogX is our annual festival of AI and it’s in London, June 10–12. We’re expecting 15,000 people — book tickets now.

Also in this week’s news briefing

China smart speaker update
New speech voices from Google
VR chatbot

Oh — cool new thing — all the articles below have links to experts on the topics covered in the article. For a private 1:1 chat with experts, simply click “Ask an expert” as below.

Leading the Pack

Google API: new voices, languages & dialects
Speech recognition and synthesis has come a long way in the last couple of years. Check out the demos Google now has for new languages and dialects. If you’re curious how Google compares against other speech to text systems, check out CognitionX’s own report on AI analysis tools for speech and text (£395+VAT).
Read more

Baidu Launches New Products
Baidu launched two new AI-based IoT smart devices for the Chinese market — Xiaodu TV Mate and Xiaodu Smart Display 1S, (a smart speaker with an extensive content library and ‘Kid’s Mode’) .
Read more

A Virtual Reality training environment
How do you simulate everyday conversation, workplace conflicts and even stressful interpersonal situations? Talespin claims to have the answer.
Read more

Numbers that Matter

Modulate, generating second voices, raises $2 million
We’ve seen voice cloning like Lyrebird and Modulate is another company in this new generation of hyper-personalised voice synthesis world.
Read more

Dashbot Raises $3 Million: Interview
Analytics of speech and text is its own thing, separate from website analytics. Dashbot is a contender in this space. CEO Arte Merritt reveals some insights during his Interview: where he sees growth and opportunity.
Read more

CognitionX Research

Chatbots in Telecommunications: Business Case Studies (NEW REPORT)
If you’re a senior leader in the telecommunications sector, curious about the potential of a conversational AI strategy, CognitionX’s latest report on chatbot case studies for telcos is designed to help accelerate your ability to create strategies with confidence.

The questions the report explores:

What does good look like for chatbots in the telecommunications sector?
What are some examples of successful case studies?
What do they cost and return-on-investment windows?
+ many others

£195+VAT for one license, £995+VAT for 10 licenses of this report

Register Interest: Chatbots in Telcos

Under the Hood

Case study: designing an empathetic chatbot
Microsoft XiaoIce (“shi-OW-ice”) is used by more than 660m users, mostly in Asia. This article reveals new detail about how they designed it. This is uniquely valuable insight in its detail and candor.
Read more