Luxury Hearables and Emotion-Aware Voice Assistant

This week in Conversational AI

Study shows that voice assistants often fail to respond to questions of health

According to a study held by Macquarie University in Australia, voice assistants tend to give inappropriate responses to questions about health. With the pandemic raging on more people will be likely to ask voice assistants about, but the likes of Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Amazon Alexa still have a lot to learn.

Image Credit: Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Montblanc launches smart headphones with Google Assistant

Smart wearables have probably never looked that good with Montblanc debuting sheepskin smart headphones with a Google Assistant button. Priced at $600, the foldable headphones are made out of silicone and sheepskin and come with a carrying case. Designed to last 20 hours, the earphones feature a button to awaken Google Assistant along with the usual playback and volume buttons.

Image Credit: Montblanc

Alexa’s new feature will make Amazon Music users happy

As part of Amazon’s effort to connect Amazon Music with Alexa along with its other products, the voice assistant can now differentiate between requests for a capella, live, and other versions of music. Users can request for a particular song or an artist’s whole live catalog.

Image Credit: Andres Urena on Unsplash

Spotify patents emotion-aware voice assistant

Last week we wrote about Spotify potentially testing voice activation and recently the company was awarded a patent enabling to make a voice assistant more responsive to human emotions. In the patent harking back to 2018, a voice assistant is described as being able to recognize and acknowledge users’ emotions offering encouragement or trying to keep pace by speaking faster or responding in fewer words.

Image Credit: Agê Barros on Unsplash