Podcast appearances and mentions of bret kinsella

We highlighted 19 generative AI news stories from early January in the latest episode of GAIN. Watch the video discussion above or read the news through the links below. CES is the featured segment at the top, with some hits and misses but mostly misses. We also have news from OpenAI with two ChatGPT announcements. That is followed by news from Google, Poe, and a number of funding rounds. Eric Schwartz, head writer of Voicebot.ai, joined Bret Kinsella to break down the news.  Generative AI News Featured CES Stories of the Week

On this episode, we explore whether voice-first experiences will be as ubiquitous as the internet and smartphones — and how brands can prepare for a voice-first future.Voice technology offers distinct advantages over other forms of inputs, allowing for lower effort customer interactions, increased efficiency and improved accessibility.With recent advancements in generative AI, voice-first experiences – the combined process of voice recognition and natural language processing – have the potential to completely transform how we interact with our devices in our everyday lives, leveraging multimodal environments to create the ultimate interface.Listen for the compelling insights of Tobias Dengel, president of WillowTree, a TELUS International Company, and Bret Kinsella, founder, CEO, and research director of Voicebot.ai.Tobias's book, The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology, is available for purchase in hardcopy, digital and audiobook formats.Visit our website to learn more about TELUS International.

We return this week with the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for September 8, 2023. Get ready for a lot of product announcements and some special segments on NVIDIA and how cloud providers are influencing the competitive landscape: NVIDIA Blowout revenue - GPU purchases are upstream of generative AI software sales. NVIDIA just announced a record quarter that was nearly double the previous quarter and quarterly record. It also forecasted a new revenue quarter for the next quarter. We put into context how this will flow down into cloud and software revenue. Cloud Wars and LLMs - What role do the cloud hyperscalers AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud play in the LLM competitive landscape? We look at the ecosystems and how cloud distribution could make or break an LLM's adoption. Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Commentary this week is led by Voicebot.ai's head writer, Eric Schwartz, and Bret Kinsella from Synthedia and Voicebot.

Preparing for the future of AI is a top priority for startups and Fortune 500 companies alike. Where's the best place to start? When it comes to brand messaging in digital marketing, how will AI impact the ‘era of authenticity'? How will increasingly ubiquitous AI chatbots affect customer engagement as they become another competitor for attention and information retrieval? Bret Kinsella, Founder, CEO, and Research Director of Voicebot.ai, explores these challenges and offers solutions to effectively leverage generative AI's transformative potential. His insight on the future of AI takes cues from the lessons of pre-generative AI applications: he doesn't believe content creation should blindly increase simply because AI offers efficiency. Marketers need to act differently. In this far-reaching conversation, Bret leads us through the path of AI production and implementation, where ethical quandaries surrounding policy and data governance loom. As a leading voice in artificial intelligence, Bret dives into best practices, keeping in mind the changes in customer expectations, the trend towards more polished marketing productions, and the future of online monetization. This episode is essential listening for longtime AI enthusiasts as well as new initiates grappling with AI adoption.Hot topics discussed: Is artificial intelligence really going to take your job? AI's impact on customer expectations and engagement Challenges in delivering personalized experiences The best AI apps for productivity and quality Strategies for preparing for an AI-driven future Keep the growth going: Connect with Bret Kinsella, Voicebot.ai Founder, CEO, & Research Director on LinkedIn Subscribe to Bret's newsletter Synthedia on Substack Subscribe to Voicebotai + Synthedia's Generative AI News (GAIN) weekly rundown on YouTube Connect with Billie Loewen, WillowTree Partner & VP of Growth Marketing on LinkedIn Connect with Billy Fischer, WillowTree Partner & VP of Business Development on LinkedIn Follow WillowTree on LinkedIn

Oren Aharon is CEO and founder of Hour One, a leader in virtual human innovation, and a pioneer in generative AI. He joined Bret Kinsella to talk about how the technology behind virtual humans has evolved and the role generative AI is playing in the next set of features.  Hour One's new Reals Activate technology can transform any video into a scripted virtual human experience. It will align mouth movements and sounds to match a script to the video of a person. This means any video of you or anyone else can be transformed into a virtual human experience. Aharon debuted this technology for the first time publicly for the Voicebot Podcast audience.  If you would like to view the demos, a video of the full interview is available on Voicebot's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/voicebotai.  Aharon also talks about the market for virtual humans and how the rising interest in generative AI has accelerated use case adoption. He earned a Phd in electrical engineering from Technion and formerly was a co-founder at Kadoor Electronics and Vectorious Medical Technologies.

It's time for the Generative AI News (GAIN) Rundown for August 17, 2023. Special segments this week include: Using GPT-4 to moderate LLM inputs The groups pressuring CEOs to adopt generative AI Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Voicebot.ai's head writer, Eric Schwartz, joined Bret Kinsella this week to break down all of the top industry stories. Generative AI News Links related to the stories are included below if you want to go deeper into any topics. Top Stories of the Week OpenAI wants you to use GPT-4 to moderate your GPT-4 based applications Two charts reveal why so many enterprises are rushing to adopt generative AI Generative AI Funding Fountain The $100M Anthropic deal with SK Telecom provides insight into where LLMs are headed Voiceflow added $15M in new funding on the back of rapid user growth and generative AI DynamoFL raises $15.1M to scale privacy-focused generative AI for enterprises OpenAI acquires digital studio Global Illumination Generative AI Product Garden IBM Embeds Meta's Llama 2 LLM in New Watsonx generative AI platform Amazon deploys generative AI for summarizing product reviews Google rolls out new generative AI search features U.S. DoD forms generative AI task force Roblox is deploying its own generative AI models and infrastructure at lower cost Detecting Deepfakes - Pindrop demos its anti-fraud voice clone detection More About GAIN   GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Sarah Rojewski, Telefonica's manager of AI and automation in Germany, and Patrick Esslinger, co-founder of VUI Agency joined Bret Kinsella to talk about the evolution of conversational AI in the contact center and the introduction of generative AI. Rojewski even goes into detail about the latest generative AI project and how the company is looking at the technology. That is supplemented by a conversation about user experience and how AI technologies require new thinking and are accompanied by different customer expectations.  Prior to her role leading AI inititiaves, Sarah Rojewski spent three years working on Telefonica's Aura voice assistant. Patrick Esslinger co-founded VUI Agency in 2017 and specializes in voice user interface design for enterprise applications. 

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is back for August 24, 2023. Special segments this week include: What does the market data say about generative AI adoption? We look at 10 charts that explain a lot about what is happening, why it is happening, and where we are headed. Meta challenges OpenAI with an open-source automated speech recognition and translation system. Game on! Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Eric Schwartz, Voicebot.ai's head writer, and Bret Kinsella gathered again this week to break down the top generative AI stories and a few other useful pieces of information. Generative AI News Links to the stories we covered this week are included below. Like Perplexity AI, we give you source links! Top Stories of the Week - Market Data

Eric Schwartz, the head writer at Voicebot.ai, joined Bret Kinsella to break down the top Generative AI News (GAIN) of the week. Generative AI News - Featured Stories this Week OpenAI rumors spread for GPT-5 and the open-source G3PO. Is this the response to Meta's Llama 2? Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are both expected to add generative AI capabilities in 2023. Could this finally lead to the blending of doing and knowing assistants? Generative AI Funding Fountain Inworld raised another $50M+ to bring total funding to around $120 million and now claims to have a $500 million valuation. Generative AI Product Garden Meta releases the open-source text-to-sound generator AudioCraft. Apple removes over 100 iOS apps from the Chinese App Store in advance of the new generative AI rules taking effect. Google Deepmind debuts a new generative AI communication language for instructing robots. And it works! Stack Overflow announced tentative steps into generative AI land with OverflowAI. News mobile app Artifact introduces celebrity voice clones you can have read the news to you. Winners and Losers We concluded with our generative AI winners and losers of the week. More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen. Or, just listen here. You decide!

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for June 1, 2023, is here. We have some special segments for you today with hosts Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella. These include: An Nvidia video demo of a humanlike conversation with an in-game non-player character Live demos of Bing search inside of ChatGPT and Google Bard's similarity A short video showing how the Google Search Generative Experience beta release works. Eric and Bret also introduced a new segment, generative AI winners and losers of the week. I am sure you will find that to be a fun addition to the show. ***Note: There are a couple of videos that we ran on the live video stream that did not record properly, so there were removed from the audio.  Generative AI News This week's top stories include multiple NVIDIA announcements, OpenAI's new AI reasoning capabilities, Runway's big payday and Google's investment, Spotify voice clones may be coming, TikTok tests a generative AI-powered assistant, how search is changing, and, of course, the lawyer's ChatGPT debacle. Please double-click on the video above and give us a like

Your Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 25, 2023, is here. Spellbook's Scott Stevenson joined Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella (that's me) to discuss the news and his company's $10.9 million funding round. We have some exclusives for you if you want to hear the latest about the OpenAI GPT-powered lawyer copilot from Spellbook. These include the surprising number of lawyers that signed up in April and the enormous customer onboarding backlog. Plus, Spellbook is hiring aggressively right now. Generative AI News Beyond the live interview segment with Spellbook, we also cover new ChatGPT features on desktop and in the iOS app, additional comments on key Microsoft announcements from this week, news from Adobe, Opera, Hugging Face, and Google. In addition, we have two interesting stories about Tesla, one involving robots and the other deepfakes. So, that should hold your attention. Please double-click on the video above and give us a like

Microsoft Build 2023 was more hotly anticipated than Apple WWDC which is hard to believe. However, that is the new reality created by ChatGPT and OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft. In this special episode of the generative AI news rundown, (GAIN), Voicebot's Bret Kinsella and Eric Schwartz break down the five top announcements from the event and the implications for users and for the market.  Topics include: Bing Search coming to ChatGPT Microsoft adopted ChatGPT Plugin model for Bing, GPT AI models on Azure, and for other applications Window AI Copilot is coming GitHub Copilot is adding an AI-chat interface Azure OpenAI Studio will let any company build their own copilot We cover a few more topics as well.  MORE ABOUT GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. You can also view this entire podcast on YouTube or just listen here. Whatever works best for you. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in an upcoming live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Here is the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 18, 2023. Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella break down the biggest industry stories of the week. Some of those stories include OpenAI, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, Zoom, Gather, and an AI virtual girlfriend that went viral. - Has Alexa been generative AI all along? Amazon says so, sort of. But is it true? - Are we emerging from the AI Autopilot Era to the Copilot Era with more human control? Satya Nadella says so. But is it true? Links related to the top stories are included below in case you'd like to explore the news in more detail. Let me know what you think about this week's topics and commentary. AI Virtual Girlfriend Nets $72K in its first week Amazon surpasses 500M Alexa devices, but do its claims of generative AI leadership ring true? OpenAI's Sam Altman wows U.S. Senators, asks them to regulate AI Satya Nadella says the AI copilot era is more human friendly than the AI autopilot era Anthropic introduces a giant LLM context window Zoom to add Anthropic to its feature set Gather raises $20M for opensource generative AI Meta has new generative AI tools for advertisers ChatGPT Pluse subscribers now have access to Plugins! More About GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. You can also view this entire podcast on YouTube or just listen here. Whatever works best for you.  Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in an upcoming live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

We have a breakdown of the week's top generative AI news stories and what they mean for the industry.  Today's hosts are Bret Kinsella, Voicebot.ai's Eric Schwartz, and industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang. The top stories just this week in a generative AI galaxy that is very, very near include: Unleashing a Synthetic Force Wes Anderson's Star Wars: In a galaxy not so far away, director Caleb Ward unleashed a one-minute cinematic masterpiece that sent millions of Twitter and YouTube users into a frenzy, dividing the fandom with the power of ironic humor. Aided by the formidable force of AI allies, Midjourney and ChatGPT, our hero Ward swiftly crafted this viral sensation destined to echo through the corridors of cyberspace. Augie Shoots for the Stars: In a realm where time is of the essence, an industry analyst harnesses the power of the enigmatic Augie to forge a captivating tale in a mere 15 minutes. This alliance breathes life into the epic saga of a brave girl's conquest of the big city, forging a triumphant path through adversity and ultimately, success. Stable Expansion to the Outer Rim The Rise of the Models: In a galaxy where AI reigns supreme, Stability AI unveils two powerful allies: Deep Floyd IF, a text-to-image wizard skilled in rendering text with unparalleled accuracy, and Stable Vicuna, an open-source chatbot prodigy trained through the ancient art of reinforced learning from human feedback. Cohere Looks for Clear Trade Lanes Star Words. The Text Awakens: In a sector riddled with fierce competition, Cohere's valuation soars to an impressive $2 billion amidst a cosmic $250 million funding round. As they forge their unique path among the stars, Cohere's unwavering focus on text-based LLMs and business-oriented applications sets them apart from the likes of OpenAI and Stability AI, giving them a chance to become the galaxy's leading alternative LLM option. The Enterprise Strikes Back Rise of the Generative Alliance: In a bold move to conquer the cosmos of generative AI, business services titan PwC prepares to invest a staggering $1 billion, joining forces with Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service to revolutionize their business practice and usher in a new era of AI-driven solutions. Samsung Travels to the Galaxy of Corporate Caution: The tech giant Samsung bans the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for work purposes, citing security risks while developing its own AI solutions in an ever-evolving battle for productivity and privacy. Disruption in the Workforce The Rise of AI Denial: In a galaxy not so far away, 62% of Earthlings foresee a great disturbance in the workforce due to the rise of artificial intelligence, yet mysteriously, only 28% sense the impact on their own fates. This perplexing phenomenon discovered by Pew Research, known as "AI Denial Syndrome," baffles minds across the cosmos. Rise of the Clones Alternate Reality: In the midst of an interstellar digital revolution, Tencent unveils a service for Earthlings to create their own deepfake "digital human" avatars for a mere $145, while rivals such as Synthesia charge a heftier fee and D-ID offers this for just a few credits. With this new power, social media influencers, small business owners, and professionals from all corners of the galaxy can create their own clone armies. A New Force Awakens: In a galaxy where TikTok rules the social media universe, the platform now tests its generative AI prowess, allowing users to create synthetic avatars from a mere handful of photos. These digital doppelgängers may soon populate the TikTok-verse, transforming the way all living things express themselves in the cosmic dance of creativity. The Chatbot Wars A New Life of Pi: A new droid has joined the cosmic conversational realm – Pi, short for Personal Intelligence, a creation of Inflection AI. This emotionally intelligent chatbot, infused with empathy and compassion, aims to transform the way we interact with artificial entities, but not all is as it seems. Bing Spreads Access to the AI Force: As the cosmic winds of innovation continue to blow, Microsoft's Bing AI Chat emerges from the shadows of its waitlist, unveiling its newfound powers of visual search and third-party plug-in integration. The galaxy awaits as these advancements promise to reshape the way intergalactic explorers seek knowledge and wield artificial intelligence. Interstellar Plugins and the UX Chronicles - In a galaxy not so far away, ChatGPT unveils 22 mighty plugins, bestowing users with the power of multimodal displays and real-time data. Yet, in this epic tale, our heroes grapple with the dark side of UX limitations as multiple plugins clash and "Incognito" mode remains elusive. This episode was originally broadcast live on YouTube. If you prefer watching so you can see the videos and other visuals, go to Voicebot's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@voicebotai. You can find the videos in the Synthetic Media and News sections or in the Live tab. While you are there, we'd appreciate if you gave us a Like and Subscribe. 

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 13, 2023, included some breaking news on Amazon Bedrock, the new service competing directly with OpenAI and Microsoft's Azure AI services. We also discussed Twitter's generative AI ambitions, HuggingGPT, a positive generative AI launch from MailChimp and a lackluster implementation by Expedia, OpenAI's bug bounty, the Italy ChatGPT saga, a deepfake of Charles Barkley, Alibab's everything AI bot, and a bit more. Bret Kinsella (that's me) hosted again this week with my Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Amazon Takes on OpenAI & Microsoft A multivendor Bedrock approach: Amazon Bedrock now offers easy access to many generative AI models, including AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Stability AI, and Titan. Copilot gets a competitor: Amazon's CodeWhisperer, a text-to-code generator, is now general availability and free. GitHub Copilot may have a market share lead with 400,000 paying subscribers, but free is a good way to accumulate users. Elon Musk Goes Shopping Twitter and Generative AI: Elon Musk has reportedly purchased 10,000 GPUs after he was out recruiting some well-known AI researchers. So, why did he want OpenAI and others to pause their AI research? We'll see. Musk may want Twitter to be an “everything app,” and generative AI would be a key element. Or, he may just want advertisers to have a useful feature. HuggingGPT and Multi-Model Systems Microsoft's latest take on hybrid AI: Microsoft researchers released a paper and a GitHub repository with a new multi-model LLM controller (orchestrator) that can govern access to a variety of AI models for a single interface called HuggingGPT. We will see more of these multi-model services. MailChimp Gets AI Copywriter Building on the core product: MailChimp added AI writing capabilities via an OpenAI integration. It looks like a clean, on-point generative AI feature. There is no extra cost for the feature right now, but at what point will the companies start passing along the model inference costs to users? Expedia Misses the Plot Generating misperception: Expedia also announced some new generative AI features, but it actually only enables you to learn more about hotels and activities. You can't actually book a flight or hotel even though the press release language was cleverly written to suggest there is more there than travel review search. Speaking of search, the new GPT-4-powered Bing not only does a better job of trip planning and research, but it also enables you to book a flight and hotel. Alibaba Goes for Everything A generative cornucopia: Alibaba announced its new generative AI solution. The ChatGPT competitor is called Tongyi Qianwen. It is integrated into the Tmall Genie assistant (i.e., Alibaba's voice assistant), takes meeting notes, writes emails, and creates business documents. It can also help you shop and the company says it supports both Chinese and English. OpenAI Bug$ Out Crowdsourcing security vulnerabilities: OpenAI launched a new Bug Bounty program which will pay out between $200 - $20,000 to developers that find “vulnerabilities, bugs, or security flaws.” This follows OpenAI's highly publicized security vulnerability and subsequent investigations by privacy regulators in Italy and Canada. FanDuel Goes Deep A young Charles Barkley pitches sports gambling: FanDuel has a new commercial that includes a real-life Charles Barkley and a deepfake of his younger self. Deepfakes are becoming mainstream. Or, maybe they already are. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience. You can see the video here on YouTube. 

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 20, 2023, was recorded live at the Model Mania conference, which focused on enterprise generative AI solutions. News this week has more on Elon Musk and some surprising news from Stability AI. We also talk about a deepfake of Drake and The Weeknd that went viral, Adobe Firefly, Atlassian, ChatGPT in government legal actions, Universal Music lawsuits, and more. Bret Kinsella hosted this week with his Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: StableLM and Stable Diffusion XL Big Data LLM: Stability AI introduced a new large language model trained on 1.5 trillion data tokens. It's open-source and comes in a variety of model parameter sizes. Stable Diffusion for the Enterprise: The new XL model from Stability AI offers better photorealism, more coherent text, and is positioned for enterprise use. Oh, and the company's valuation may have risen from $1B to $4B in less than six months. Adobe Firefly for Video Generative AI for designers and video makers: Adobe Firefly will make it easier for designers to incorporate generative AI into their workflow. The new services for video production will take that to a new level in Premiere and After Effects. Atlassian Intelligence In-Context Search and Answers: The creator of Jira, Confluence, and Trello has added generative AI features for summarization, text generation, and question-answering from your productivity software data. Elon Musk and X.ai What is Elon up to now: Musk created a new company in Nevada last month called X.ai. He says he wants to create a third option beyond OpenAI and Google offerings. Justice Dept Mentions ChatGPT Name recognition on another level: The U.S. Justice Department's suit against Google for alleged search monopolization said ChatGPT might have come sooner if not for the company's stranglehold on the market. The Weeknd and Drake Deepfake Goes Viral Viral Music duo: 10M TikTok views and 600k Spotify streams later, a popular deepfake of a The Weeknd and Drake called “Heart on My Sleeve” was taken down due to a request from one of the music labels.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 27, 2023, is here. Another week of breaking news has piled up, and we have a breakdown of the top stories and what they mean for the industry. The developments include news from ChatGPT, HuggingFace, Google, Nvidia, Sensory, Hour One, D-ID, deepfake musicians, and more. Your hosts today are Bret Kinsella and Voicebot.ai's Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: ChatGPT En Fuego Plugging in a new vision: Greg Brockman from OpenAI demonstrated some new ChatGPT plugin features; several are jaw-dropping. The “super app” virtual assistant we were promised: Brockman's demo and the discussion about the product philosophy offer an insight into where ChatGPT is headed. Move over, Alexa. Get out of the way, Siri. ChatGPT may be the virtual assistant we have always wanted. ChatGPT is anything but incognito: While everything ChatGPT seems to play out in the public eye, OpenAI recognized that not every user wanted every one of their chat conversations saved in perpetuity and used for future model training. Incognito (i.e., private chatting) is now available, and a “business mode” is coming soon. HuggingChat Embraces Open Source Open source competition for ChatGPT: Hugging Face stepped up and provided a ChatGPT alternative built on open source models and data. It's a smaller AI model than ChatGPT and is pretty good. Deepfake Entertainment Drake, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and Rihanna go viral: Viral hits from big stars are common. Deepfake viral hits mimicking the voice, style, and likeness of big stars may also become common. ghostwrider777 strikes again! Joe Rogan comments run deep: New deepfakes mimicking Joe Rogan's podcast have the comedian and commentator talking about a “slippery” slope. Grimes jumps on board: The musical artist says she will split royalties 50/50 with anyone deepfaking her voice. She has no label and no binding legal constraints giving her more flexibility than most musicians. More Virtual Human Expansion Prompt-to-video: Hour One introduced a new text-to-video solution that enables full video generation for presentations from a single prompt. Canva gets digital people: D-ID introduced a new Canva app that enables you to add generative videos to any project. Chatbots are suddenly popular: Character AI landed $150M in funding at an obscene valuation. Virtual Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and 2.7 million other chatting avatars with personalities have driven 100M user visits in just two months. Google Ups Generative Game Bard learns to code: Google is slowly catching up with the generative AI leaders. It's ChatGPT competitor—or, is it a Bing Chat competitor—can now code. This is not a true competitor to GitHub Copilot yet. Sec-PaLM gets into security: Google also rolled out a new cybersecurity solution with the parsimonious name of Google Cloud Security AI Workbench. It is based on a fine-tuned version of the PaLM large language model (LLM). Nvidia and Sensory Plug Market Gaps ChatGPT gets an edge: Sensory rolled out a new hybrid on-device and cloud solution that can enable the use of ChatGPT and similar services on devices. Nvidia on rails: NeMo, Nvidia's LLM, now has a new feature for adding guardrails to other LLMs to align model outputs with companies' safety and security requirements. NeMo Guardrails is open source and designed to work with any LLM.

The Future of Life Institute, an organization funded by the Musk Foundation, issued a letter calling for a pause of "giant AI experiments" for six months. Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, AI legend Yoshua Bengio, and many thousands of others signed the letter. The idea behind the letter is that the risks posed by AI models such as GPT-4 are potentially so high that we must give policy-makers and technology leaders a chance to assess what guardrails are necessary. But is this a good idea? What are the risks of a pause? What are the objectives and conflicts of interest of the people that signed the letter? Muddu Sudhakar, the CEO of Aisera, joined me to talk about the letter and all of the discussion it has sparked. We also discussed some alternative approaches, common misunderstandings, and how generative AI is rapidly changing assumptions about our world.  Sudhakar previously appeared on Voicebot Podcast episode 280. He is a former senior VP and GM at ServiceNow, Splunk, VMWare, and Pivotal. He was CEO at Caspida when the company was acquired by Splunk, where he assumed leadership for machine learning, AI, and analytics-based solutions. Sudhakar was also the CEO and founder of the big data startup Cetas, which was acquired by VMWare, and founded Sanera Systems, which was acquired by Brocade/McData. He began his career as an engineer at IBM and SGI and earned his PhD in computer science from UCLA. Go Bruins!

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 6, 2023, focused on regulators and OpenAI, ChatGPT's popularity compared to the iPhone, deepfake disclosure, authentication and ownership, monetizing those generative AI models, what's Meta doing, and more. Bret Kinsella (that's me) hosts this week with guests Nina Schick, the author of the 2020 book Deepfakes, and Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: ChatGPT Gets Banned A time-out chair for OpenAI and some unfortunate users: Italy took action. Canada opened an investigation. France received complaints. Germany and Ireland indicated they'd like to get involved. Regulators have OpenAI in their sights. How will it go down? ChatGPT vs. Alexa vs. iPhone Compared to what?: ChatGPT is a phenomenon, but how does it stack up to the hype of earlier products? We compare ChatGPT to some notable break-out hits. Deepfake Solutions Provenance in the unreal valley: It's a deepfake, but you want to disclose its synthetic origins. You also want to show its history and ownership. How about a cryptographic signature from Truepic that tracks the life of the digital artifact? The unbearable likeness of your being: Those amazingly lifelike avatars don't have a clear ownership model today. Someone could make a deepfake of you, and what recourse do you have? However, if you owned the copyright to your digital likeness… Bing Chat Ads Arrive Paying for those GPT-4 inference costs: We knew they were coming, and now we know what they look like, at least one format. Bing Chat has ads that look a lot like what you see in web searches today, with a twist. Generative AI definitely has a revenue model. Meta Gets Objective Alignment is king: Meta rolled out another researcher-only generative AI model. However, this time it showed up with a demonstration app. Segment Anything is a new AI (foundation) model for identifying objects in images and being able to save them separately from the picture with two clicks. Canva, the True Believer Taking the lead over Microsoft: The Redmond giant has talked about DALL-E and GPT-4 in Microsoft Designer and coming to PowerPoint. Canva just started adding new features. A light skepticism from the company in December (ironically about new generative AI features) was replaced by more robust tools and a bigger vision. More About GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 30, 2023, had controversy, competition, Coca-Cola, and more. Is there a more dynamic market right now than generative AI? I don't think so. This week's show is hosted by Bret Kinsella with guests Silke Hahn, technology editor at Heise Online, and Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Musk Wants to Slow Down AI The Letter: A letter from the Future of Life Institue signed by Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque, and 17k others called for a six-month moratorium on “the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” But maybe this isn't an entirely altruistic activity. Google Rumors and More Issues Haunted by ChatGPT: Google rumors pointed to the company using ChatGPT data in Bard training and efforts to combine DeepMind brains and Google AI team brains to catch up with OpenAI's chatbot. The headlines don't tell the real story. OpenAI Declares War and Defends the Citadel ChatGPT Plugins: OpenAI is adding plugins to ChatGPT. This puts everyone on notice that OpenAI is now an end-user application product provider and an AI model provider. ChatGPT Security: A serious ChatGPT security vulnerability was discovered by a security researcher and promptly patched by OpenAI. There is a bigger story here. Perplexity AI Lands Funding Conversational search wars: It's not cheap to compete in the search business. Perplexity AI just raised $25.6 million to challenge Bing Chat and Google Bard for conversational search market share. Stanford Finds Its LLiMit Alpaca sent packing: Stanford University launched a web demo of its Alpaca generative AI model based on Meta's LLaMA model and trained using ChatGPT-generated data. It was shut down in just a couple of days due to safety and cost concerns. Zoom Goes Generative From video to smart companion: Zoom IQ is adding new generative AI features to extend the value of video conferencing beyond the meeting. Coke Tapping into DALL-E Magic New (Coke) custom OpenAI model: Coca-Cola has a new marketing campaign that asks artists to create Coke-themed imagery using a custom implementation of DALL-E. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 23, 2023, was packed with significant announcements. Bret Kinsella hosts this week along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Nvidia Moves up the Stack Picasso and NeMo: Nvidia isn't going just to cash checks for GPU sales related to the generative AI tsunami. They now offer text-to-image and text-to-text models that compete directly with OpenAI, Google, and Stable Diffusion. Omniverse Upgrade: Omniverse is an open platform for 3D design collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulations. It announced new services for creating virtual factories mirroring real-world facilities, the option to stream simulated experiences and train to AI-powered robots, and a simulator for testing autonomous vehicles. Google Teases Gen AI Features and Models Show your PaLMs: Google is now letting testers use its giant large language model (LLM) PaLM. This is different from LaMDA and might eventually be a replacement for the brains behind Bard. Right now, it is Google's answer to GPT-3/GPT-4. A tool to help developers using PaLM called MakerSuite was also announced. Gmail and Docs to Get AI writing assistant: Docs and Gmail are getting PaLM-enabled text generation features. Bard announced again: Google says it is now offering access to Bard to the general public. But there is a waitlist. AI-Generated Beauty Midjourney 5 is here: There are several minor upgrades, but the key benefits are enhanced quality, more coherence, better photorealism, and more detail. Bing adds DALL-E: You can now create images in Bing through a new DALL-E integration. The quality seems better to me than DALL-E 2, which you can access today on OpenAI. Might this be the long-awaited DALL-E 3? Synthetic Media Policy TikTok to tighten deepfake rules: TikTok announced new policies around synthetic media and deepfake use on the platform before its CEO's Congressional testimony. The policy description grew from 30 words to nearly 400. Will others social platforms take this as a cue to make their own updates? Games Go Generative Roblox wants to make development easier: Roblox added generative AI tools that enable developers to use natural language to create objects and generate code. Unity wants generative AI NPCs: Unity didn't make any concrete announcements. However, its CEO told Reuters that generative AI would help game makers write dialogue and enable non-player characters to interact more naturally with human players. Other News LinkedIn goes generative: The Microsoft-owned company added new generative AI features to create user profiles and job descriptions. SoundHound shows Chat AI assistant: The new mobile app offers an assistant that blends SoundHound's NLU-based assistant with new LLM features. More About GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, participate in the live show by commenting.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 16, 2023, required some tough decisions. So much happened this week that we zeroed in on the biggest stories and how they will shape the market. We might get to some of the others, like Midjourney 5, next week. In this episode, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Generative AI for Knowledge Workers Microsoft 365 Copilot: A natural language assistant that is a system and not just a bunch of bolt-on LLM features. Can it live up to the ambition? It's definitely impressive. Google Workspace: Some generative AI features are coming to Google Docs and Gmail. Still closed access and little detail, but an official signal about new features. Also, the approach today is less ambitious than Microsoft's. The Long Wait is Over GPT-4 is Here: The much-hyped and long-awaited GPT-4 launch finally arrived. It is multimodal with a vision input element, but that is not widely available. However, the output quality is clearly better, OpenAI claims that factuality is higher and hallucinations rarer, and the context window quadrupled. ChatGPT Contenders Take a Step Forward Anthropic Claude: The ChatGPT competitor was formally announced. However, there is still a waitlist! Quora to Monetize Poe: Quora might face an existential crisis as answers become easier to find with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the New Bing. However, Poe doesn't rely on one LLM. It allows the user to access many. And Quora is charging for access. LLMs and Popular Culture ChatGPT on South Park: The latest South Park episode featured ChatGPT. When new enterprise technology starts showing up in iconic popular culture venues, something important is happening. Plus, this is just funny. More About GAIN The GAIN Rundown was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience. If you would like to watch the show live join us on YouTube or LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel and view the visuals that go along with the show.

The top generative AI news (GAIN) of the week is back for March 9, 2023. This week, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and our guest, Brandon Kaplan, chief innovation officer at Journey, and the founder of Skilled Creative. Stories in generative AI land this week include: Enterprise apps all in on LLMs SlackGPT: A new ChatGPT feature for Slack developed by OpenAI Salesforce GPT: Einstein GPT features that Salesforce rolled out this week Grammarly GPT: Grammarly also adds generative AI features for its 30 million users, putting it on a collision course with Jasper AI, AI21's Wordtune, and Microsoft. The Evolution of Search Answer Box Mania: Both Brave and DuckDuckGo have new search summarization features that appear to replicate the Google answer box. The companies are applying LLMs, but the features are not nearly as ambitious as Bing or Bard. What they do show is how quickly the search experience is changing. Larger Language Models Large, Larger, and Largest: AI21 Labs, a competitor to OpenAI, announced some new, larger, and more polished large language models. The announcement was accompanied by a number of new APIs for a variety of LLM features that developers can access by the drink. Talk with ChatGPT ChatGPT Gets a Face: We also have D-ID's new virtual human-led chat that enables you to have a conversation with ChatGPT-enabled avatar. This discussion included a conversation about the role of virtual humans in interactive bot experiences. Elon Musk Rumors A Singular Generative AI: We finish with a discussion about Elon Musk's plans to challenge OpenAI, a company where he was a co-founder. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and you can watch it on Voicebot's YouTube channel.

Join Humanitarian AI Today as guest host Brent Phillips sits down with Bret Kinsella, founder of Voicebot.ai and Synthedia, to delve into the latest advancements in conversational AI and voice technology. Kinsella, a leading expert in the field, will discuss the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI and its potential to revolutionize the humanitarian aid sector. Learn about the capabilities of large language machine learning models for dialogue applications, and gain insights on the direction of this technology and the steps humanitarian organizations should take to adapt and incorporate these powerful tools in their operations by 2023. This podcast is a must-listen for professionals in the humanitarian aid community seeking to stay informed on the latest developments in AI technology.

Bret Kinsella wrote this: Jasper AI quietly built one of the top AI-based writing assistants atop OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model (LLM). Then, suddenly its growth and recognition exploded ... in a good way. That led to a $125 million series A funding round that was well-timed ahead of the new interest in the AI-writing assistant space after the introduction of ChatGPT.  Shane Orlick is president of Jasper AI and walks through the company's origins, the product, and how customers use these tools today. He even mentions some product features that have not yet been announced (breaking news on the Voicebot Podcast once again) and how users are applying the new Jasper Chat (a ChatGPT-like interface) versus the templates that Jasper has created and refined for specific use cases. For those of you interested in the technical stack behind Jasper and the company's move to build an internal NLU and new AI models that supplement the OpenAI APIs, this may be the only conversation out there with that insight.  Shane also discusses the broader market news, such as the impact of ChatGPT, the emergence of text-to-image models, and the rumors about OpenAI's big valuation and potential new investment from Microsoft. We cover a lot of ground around products, user behavior, generative AI, and the broader synthetic media market.  Jasper AI rewrote the above to this: Jasper AI is quickly becoming a leader in the AI-writing assistant space. Founded atop OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model (LLM), the company has seen tremendous growth and recognition, so much so that it was able to secure a $125 million series A funding round just before the rise of interest in AI-writing assistants with ChatGPT. Shane Orlick, president of Jasper AI, outlines the company's origins, product features (including some exclusive news!), and how customers are using these tools. In addition, he dives into the technical stack behind Jasper, which includes an internal NLU and new AI models beyond what OpenAI APIs offer. He also shares his thoughts on the broader synthetic media market, including ChatGPT's influence, text-to-image models, OpenAI's potential big valuation, and Microsoft potentially investing. This podcast offers an insightful look at what users can expect from Jasper as well as trends in generative AI and user behavior when it comes to writing and creating content with these tools. ***** Let me know which one you like better!

2022 was the year of synthetic media. The mainstreaming of deepfakes and voice clones, along with the rise of text-to-image AI models, assured synthetic media of a breakout year. Then ChatGPT came along. It changed the conversation entirely and consumed news media and social media cycles for weeks. The GPT-3.5 model was better than expected, and the fine-tuning that delivered ChatGPT showed that large language models were ready to up end a lot of assumptions about what technology in general, and AI in particular, can do.  Joining host Bret Kinsella to break down the top synthetic media news of 2022 are Rupal Patel of Veritone, Michal Stanislawek of Utter.one and Hearme.ai, and Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai. Get ready for an in-depth discussion about everything from digital waste to the meaning of mortality. Along the way, the group discusses OpenAI, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, GPT-3, Google LaMDA, virtual humans, synthetic voices, America's Got Talent, and more. 

Zohaib Ahmed joined us at the Synthedia synthetic media conference in September to discuss Resemble's work re-creating the voice of famed pop artist Andy Warhol. A Netflix documentary was under development that centered around Warhol's diaries. The creators thought it would be more impactful if the viewers could hear the ideas and experiences of Warhol in the artist's own voice. So, they began searching for a synthetic speech provider that could create a voice clone.   Ahmed goes through the creation process and some of the challenges faced along the way. Plus there are a couple of nuances that you will find interesting.   Zohaib Ahmed is the CEO and co-founder of Resemble AI. He appeared previously on the podcast in episodes 251 and 103. Ahmed previously was a lead software engineer at Magic Leap and Hipmunk and a developer at Blackberry.   Voicebot's Eric Schwartz interviews Ahmed in this episode and Bret Kinsella adds commentary at the end about the evolution of synthetic speech. 

Greg Cross, CEO and co-founder of Soul Machines recently took to the stage at the Synthedia synthetic media conference with a discussion titled: "The Robots are Coming and We Need Them Now." His thesis that we are already living in the future because the events over the past two years have accelerated societal change is backed up by mounting data. One area that is greatly impacted is the accelerated need for automation and often it requires a digital brain to determine what types of digital services and interactions will best serve a custom. Enter autonomous digital people.  Greg's talk can also be viewed in Voicebot's YouTube channel where you will see as well as hear the digital humans. However, the presentation and the conversation with host Bret Kinsella are also well-suited to listening.  If you want to know what 2025 looks like, you can see it all around you right now. 

The Amazon Alexa Live event for 2022 introduced a couple of dozen new features for developers, new revenue-sharing agreements, and is ushering in a new era of simultaneous voice assistants.  The Two Voice Devs, Allen Firstenberg (Google Assistant GDE) and Mark Tucker (Alexa Champion), along with Voicebot's Eric Schwartz and Bret Kinsella break down the announcements and sort through the type of impacts we can expect. 

Topics today include Amazon's new Astro Robot in operation, the rise of voice AI in the contact center, the increase in acquisitions and large funding rounds, custom branded assistants, Google's sunsetting of conversational actions, and a whole lot more.   Speakers breaking down the news of 2022 so far: - Sarah Andrew Wilson - former CCO at Matchbox.io before Volley acquisition - Paul Sweeney - chief product officer at Webio - Eric Schwartz - head writer at Voicebot.ai - Bret Kinsella - founder of Voicebot.ai

Six industry leaders join with Voicebot's Bret Kinsella to discuss 2022 voice AI predictions, barriers to adoption, and top developments in the industry over the past two years. This is part two of our two-part series. Commentary from: Joao Alqueres, Iara Benjamin Brown, ConverseNow Pete Erickson, Modev Hannes Heikenheimo, Speechly Mike Zagorsek, SoundHound Dylan Zwick, Pulse Labs 

Seven industry leaders join with Voicebot's Bret Kinsella to discuss 2022 voice AI predictions, barriers to adoption, and top developments in the industry over the past two years. Commentary from: Audrey Arbeeny Chithra Durgam Jason Fields Maarten Lens-FitzGerald Todd Mozer Patricia Scanlon Amy Stapleton

Today we break down key findings from the Healthcare Voice Assistant Consumer Adoption Report for 2022. The data includes 2019 - 2021 trends and analysis including market size, user adoption demographics, what patients want, and much more.  This episode features Bret Kinsella breaking down the data and discussing the implications for the voice and healthcare industries. There is a companion to this episode released on YouTube where you can view the charts referenced in the show. 

Today's episode breaks down some of the key findings from the Voice Shopping Consumer Adoption Report for 2021. Data presented goes back to 2018 and shows a rising trend in adoption. Learn about total users, total consumer interest, product categories, average voice shopping order size, demographic data around users and much more.  This episode features Bret Kinsella breaking down the data and discussing the implications for the voice and retail industries. There is a companion to this episode release on YouTube where you can view the charts referenced in the show. 

Welcome to another episode of The Speechly Podcast where you can expect conversations exploring the best opportunities in the world of Voice User Interfaces. Today we have the next interview from the "Voice Pioneers Fireside Chats" series. In this series you can expect interviews with individuals who have made a significant impact in the world of Voice Technology. We will explore the past work that makes them a “Pioneer” while also exploring topics around the current and future user behavior with Voice-Enabled experiences. Today my guest is Bret Kinsella. Bret is the founder of the go to site for all things Voice Tech and Conversational AI news, Voicebot.ai. However, prior to starting Voicebot Bret got started with Voice Technology as the CMO at XappMedia, early pioneers in voice-enabled interactive audio advertising. With 2021 coming to an end, I couldn't think of a better guest to have a discussion with on the key trends from the past year and what to pay attention to in 2022. We discussed topics such as: - What was the experience like as the CMO XappMedia? - What led to the start of Voicebot.ai? - What were the key trends from the Voice Tech space in 2021? - What will be the key Voice Tech trends in 2022? - Why is Voice Tech taking off in the Enterprise? - What role will Voice Tech play in the Metaverse? I hope you enjoy this conversation with Bret Kinsella on the Speechly Podcast! Follow Bret & Voicebot.ai: Voicebot.ai Twitter - @voicebotai and @bretkinsella Linkedin - Voicebot Voice Insider Follow Speechly: Speechly.com Twitter - @SpeechlyAPI GitHub.com/Speechly LinkedIn

Voice assistants are used across many devices and in many different contexts. The car is what we characterize as among the big 3 along with smart speakers and smartphones. These are the surfaces that have the largest voice assistant user bases both overall and in terms of active users. The recently published In-Car Voice Assistant Consumer Adoption Report for 2021 is the jumping-off point for today's discussion between Bret Kinsella and Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai. This report includes consumer adoption data from the U.S., UK, and Germany and includes consumer trend data going back to 2019. There is also a lot of analysis dedicated to the capabilities and momentum of the key vendors providing voice assistant technology to automakers. In addition, we discuss trends in the news around automaker voice assistant related announcements. Today's discussion is a quick way to get oriented around that state of voice assistant adoption and capabilities in the car. For those of you looking for more details, go to research.voicebot.ai.

I've been fascinated with voice speakers and voice assistant technologies since getting my first Amazon Echo device in November of 2014. But I had been using a voice assistant since 2011 with the introduction of Siri on my iPhone. And with 2021 marking the 10th anniversary of the voice assistant in our lives, I was very excited to have a LinkedIn Live conversation with Bret Kinsella, CEO and founder of Voicebot.ai, the leading source of information on voice technology on the web. Bret shares his thoughts on the pandemic's impact on voice adoption, why enterprise business application vendors have been slow to integrate voice-first tech into using their software, and what kinds of use cases are on the horizon that will get our attention sooner rather than later.

Welcome to episode #779 of Six Pixels of Separation. Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation - Episode #779 - Host: Mitch Joel. You never know who you are going to meet and become friends with online. Going back to the early days of Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Siri and beyond, the idea of apps (or skills, as they are called) for these interactive audio platforms has always interested me (so much so, that I was an investor in a voice skills company, and became interested in running it for a short period of time). At the forefront of this space (and other audio platforms and technologies) is Bret Kinsella. Bret is founder, CEO, and research director of Voicebot.ai. He was named commentator of the year by the Alexa Conference in 2019 and is widely cited in media and academic research as an authority on voice assistants and AI. He is also the host of the Voicebot Podcast and editor of the Voice Insider newsletter. I reached out to him several times back when I was investing in the space, but he was too busy to connect. Then, through the power of Clubhouse, we met and became fast friends. Our world continues to evolve. Smart audio, podcasting, bots, and more are becoming a powerful tool for businesses smart enough to understand the potential, opportunity and inevitability of it all. Enjoy the conversation... Running time: 59:11. Hello from beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at Apple Podcasts. Please visit and leave comments on the blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on Twitter. Here is my conversation with Bret Kinsella. Voicebot.ai. Voicebot Podcast. Voice Insider newsletter. Follow Bret on LinkedIn. Follow Bret on Twitter. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'.

Kathy's in. Marc's out. It takes an exclusive invitation to be on Clubhouse--and only one of our hosts has it. Clubhouse is the hot new audio-only app that's dominating social media with its high-profile users and niche chatrooms. With opportunities for networking, business growth, and building personal connections, it's obvious why everyone wants in. The catch? No posts, no comments, and no one can join without a coveted invite. (Sorry, Marc!)So, how can your business use Clubhouse to its full potential? Marc and Kathy connect with social audio expert and founder of Voicebot.ai, Bret Kinsella, for exclusive insights on Clubhouse's rising popularity and how to use it for your business.For more information, visit onthemarcmedia.com or email offthemarc@onthemarcmedia.com

When I was on the Voicebot podcast, Bret asked me whether we're going through a voice first winter. I said that I didn't think so, nor did I really care. There are opportunities to do good work and enhance people's lives regardless. However, there has been an undercurrent in pockets of the industry where some folks are becoming frustrated that voice hasn't reached its potential (however you define that).Over the past few weeks, founder of WitLingo, Ahmed Bouzid was involved in a conversation at the popular VoiceLunchmeet where a participant stated that:‘Beyond the weather, time, and the occasional timer and alarm,’ they mused out loud, ‘am I myself really using my Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant that much in my life? I mean, really and honestly, am I? No, actually, not really…. So, if I am not using them that much and yet I am such a believer in Voice First, what hope is there for the rest of the world?’He wrote a piece summarising his thoughts. This coincided with a post from Bespoken.io founder, John Kelvie's post claiming voice is stuck.The primary questions raised in both of these two pieces are:Is voice living up to its promise?Where is the true value in voice first?Has there been enough improvement in the technology and ecosystem to support its own ecosystem like the App Store?To debate this, we brought along Voicebot.ai founder Bret Kinsella, together with Ahmed and John to figure out where we actually stand and where we need to go next. We also continued this discussion on Clubhouse afterwards. Follow @kanesimms on Clubhouse for more open ended after show discussions.LinksRead voicebot.aiCheck out WitLingo and BespokenRead Voice is stuckRead The #VoiceFirst User Interface Has a Use Case Fit ProblemRead Voice first sucksFollow Ahmed, John and Bret on TwitterConnect with Ahmed, John and Bret on LinkedIn See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is a recording of our live event in our ALL ABOUT CLUB. In our new format "Meet The Expert" we interviewed Bret Kinsella from voicebot.ai about the current state of voice technology with a recap of 2020 and things you should have an eye on in 2021!

Guest: Bret Kinsella, Founder and CEO of Voicebot.ai Topic: The State of Voice Technology and What Comes Next Bret joins Dave for the 50th episode of the podcast to break down the current state of voice technology, with a look toward what's on the horizon with conversational voice assistants. The two talk through the following topics: - The current phase of voice assistants: habituation & specialization - all the various ways that people are gradually building the habit of using voice assistants, along with the specialized voice assistants that are being built for specific domains (i.e. banking, healthcare, agriculture) - How different modalities (speakers, smart displays, smart TV's, hearables) are adding breadth in use cases and perpetuating the habituation of voice assistants - How the Alexa, Google and Siri ecosystems are taking shape and what to expect in the near future for each of these, as well as some of the more niche players - The importance of media to voice assistants and why Bret & Dave agree that it will likely be one of the most impactful use cases for conversational AI - Marsbot and the emergence of hearables-specific applications for voice assistants Episode Transcription: https://futurear.co/2020/11/12/050-bret-kinsella-the-state-of-voice-tech-what-comes-next/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/futureear/message

In this episode I describe an article on Voicebot.ai written by Bret Kinsella on Amazon’s evolving relationship with developers and I share some thoughts on voice-first killer apps.

Bret Kinsella of Voicebot.ai joins Jefferson Graham to weigh in on Google's new product reveal, and why they both think the new Chromecast and Google TV are the most interesting of the product reveals

After Amazon's unveiling of some 12+ new products this week, Jefferson Graham and Voicebot.ai's Bret Kinsella answer the big questions: what's the one product we most want?

Bret Kinsella from Voicebot.ai joins Jefferson Graham to preview Amazon's new Alexa products, which will be announced on 9/24.

Manager, Amazon Literary Partnership Interview starts at 12:49 and ends at 46:59 Links “Amazon Echo Look No More - Another Alexa Device Discontinued” by Bret Kinsella at voicebot.ai - May 29, 2020 Alexandra Woodworth at Linkedin Amazon Literary Partnership Artist Relief Deep Vellum Publishing City of Asylum LitNet Amazon Book Review Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang Academy of American Poets How to suspend a Hold on OverDrive My Must Reads app Libro.fm Next Week's Guest David Pepper, author of The Voter File, available for pre-order with delivery June 2, 2020 Click here to enable my daily Morning Journal flash briefing at the Alexa Skills store. You will then hear each day's entry by saying, “Alexa, what's new?” Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

Tal Wanderow is CEO of Vocalis. He and host Bret Kinsella discuss the latest progress behind employing vocal biomarkers to evaluate health conditions and risks. We go into detail about the current work behind tools for diagnosing and monitoring COVID-19 patients. We even explore the ethics of what data patients should have a right to access. Vocalis Health is focused on using vocal biomarkers to identify the likelihood of hospitalization for a variety of conditions and have another product focused on respiratory disease detection and monitoring. Given that background, it's not surprising that the company has taken a prominent role in the healthcare industry response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The National Football League (NFL) in the U.S. is the top sports league by revenue globally. It is also a media powerhouse that has been experimenting with voice assistant technology to enhance the fan experience.   Joining Voicebot Podcast host Bret Kinsella today is Ian Campbell from NFL Labs, the innovation arm of the NFL. He has worked in product design, UX and innovation for the past two years in his second tour with the NFL. Earlier in his career, Ian was director of creative and UX for NFL.com and the various football and fantasy football mobile apps of the league. He has also worked previously at Phenomenon, DeviantArt, GolinHarris, and Digitas.   Also joining us is John Gillilan, founder of Bondad.fm, who has been working with the NFL on its voice initiatives. John is a creative voice designer and Alexa Champion that previously worked at Disney, Maker Studios, and KUFALA Recordings. He was also co-founder of Vosotros, an independent music distribution company where he executive produced 10 albums with 100+ musicians.    Ian and John walked through an interesting presentation at Project Voice where they went through the backstory behind The Rookie's Guide to the NFL Alexa skill and Flash Briefing. They also discussed the overall strategy and design considerations as well as some projects that are not yet public but are available today to NFL employees. We discuss a wide range of topics including the use of avatars, multimodal design and how to think about mobile devices differently that smart speakers and smart displays. Enjoyl 

In this episode, Teri will share his experience at the recent Project Voice 2020 and give us some of the highlights of the event.He met so many like-minded people at the event, listened in on some sessions and participated in others. Bradley Metrock and his team did a great job organizing and coordinating the event. Teri had a videographer following him around for the entire duration of the event so he could capture as much content as possible to share with the Alexa in Canada audience. He was awarded the Flash Briefing of the Year award at the event.Welcome and Enjoy!Teri made a couple of short clips of his conversations with the people he met at the event, and the include:Scot Westwater from Pragmatic DigitalScot and his wife Susan are the founders of Pragmatic Digital and they just recently released a book that they did the book signing for at the event.They also recently released a new program called Voice Masters.They are focused on creating strategies for voice. They help businesses figure out what the value for their audience is, figure out what they’re trying to achieve from a business standpoint, and to actually figure out where those two intersect to create something that is useful and usable, instead of just novelty.He was excited by Teri’s panel and wanted to attend the event because they hadn’t attended in 2019.They will be doing a talk about strategy and the book they just released.Noa Eshed from Trinity AudioShe is the CMO of Trinity Audio and attended the event to learn more about the audio and voice industry, while also learning more about the predictions for 2020.She predicts that more readers will turn to listeners in 2020.She thinks publications will produce their written content in audio form too.She also predicts that audio advertising will evolve. This will happen through humanizing brands and telling stories.Roger Kibbe of Samsung BixbyHe is a developer and evangelist for Samsung Bixby.He is at the Project Voice to attend some sessions and do a talk.He will also be giving a workshop for Bixby with his team.He is excited to see how big the industry has gotten and how much momentum is around it.In 2020, he sees brands getting very serious about voice, and including it in their marketing budgets.Dr. Neil Desai of MedFlashGoHe is a family physician and one of the co-founders of MedFlashGo and DentalFlashGo, which are Alexa skills.He is the chief marketing officer for both those skills.They are focused on evolving medical education in the 21st century and training the next generation of physicians and healthcare professionals to teach, learn, create, and practice medicine in the century we live in by leveraging voice.He thinks voice technology will be adopted more in 2020.Dr. Sirish Kondabolu of Medicine Remixed PodcastHe is an orthopedic surgeon by training and the co-founder of Medicine Remixed which is a media company focused on podcasting and voice technology.On the voice side, he is interested in the implications of voice in both patient education and provider education. He feels that there are so many simple interventions that we can do using voice.One use case that he has been fascinated with is patient education specifically in orthopedic surgery with for example, post-op discharge instructions.Voice is the only platform where people can do all sorts of things while listening to what they need to listen to.Amy Stapleton of TellablesShe is the Founder and CEO of Tellables.She will be talking at the event about merging Tellables into a brand new company called Chatables. They will be extending their storytelling experience from the lessons that they learned from their My Box of Chocolates experience and conversational stories. They are building a new platform for authors and are looking into stories as a service where brands can extend their conversations with their customers by engaging with Chatables to find a conversational story that might peak the interest of customers.She thinks 2020 will be a transitional year where a lot of changes will take place in voice technologies.Andy Bellevia of KnowlesCorpHis company makes small microphones and speakers for mobile phones, voice assistants, smart speakers, other voice enabled IoT devices, hearables and hearing aids.He is responsible for all the in-ear products, and that’s what brought him to Project Voice, to get an insight into the intersection of modern hearables, where they’re going, and how hearables will enable voice on the go wherever someone goes.There has been a new Bluetooth standard for hearables that will be lower powered so hearables will have longer battery life and now they’ve become very useful to wear all day. Andy watched at CES how Google Assistant is pushing towards voice enabling third party apps.Katherine Prescott of VoiceBrewShe is the founder and editor of VoiceBrew, a digital media company dedicated to helping people get the most out of Alexa. They currently have 40,000 subscribers.They do a daily “One Actually Awesome Thing to Try with Alexa”They also publish comprehensive feature guides on everything from Alexa routines, to drop-in, to important topics like privacy.They recently launched an Alexa Tip of the Day flash brIefing largely inspired by Teri and other flash briefing creators.Daniel Hill He teaches small business owners how to use Instagram.He has a flash briefing where he talks about news, new features that have come to Instagram, strategies, tips and tricks, and answers questions on there.He spoke at the event about discoverability on voice especially voice skills.Adrian Simple of Gaming ObserverHe runs an Alexa flash briefing called the Gaming Observer, which is ranked number one in the US and the UK.Danny OrtizHe works with an incubator in Columbus, Ohio called Wave Columbus or the Wave Innovation Center. They incubate companies and help them grow in whatever area.David Box from Macadamian TechnologiesHe and his company presented topics on how to start up a voice skill in a voice bootcamp 101 type of session.They are focused on building the future of healthcare, and voice is a large part of that. They look at many different ways where they can incorporate voice into clinical workflows, and into the everyday lives of patients in order to improve outcomes and help clinicians improve their daily lives.Nate Trelor from OrbitaHe sees a transformation of healthcare taking place in 2020 through the power of voice.Voice has already started being used in clinical use cases transforming how patients communicate with their care providers and manage their own wellness.Carl Robinson of the Voice Tech PodcastHe saw some amazing presentations at the event.He has mostly been doing a range of podcast interviews with interesting people at the event.Bret Kinsella of VoiceBot.aiHe was the focus of the Bret Kinsella roast during the award ceremony which was a lot of fun.He also won the This Week in Voice Award for the Voice/AI Commentator of the year, and won the Voice/AI journalist of the year.They educate the industry and help people make better decisions so they can understand what’s going on today and where the trends are headed.Ray Kyle of Project VoiceHe’s a huge part of the Project Voice team.He handles business development for the event and all the Voice First events they do all over the US.Bradley Metrock of Project VoiceHe is the CEO of Score Publishing, a new type of publishing company that help creators find voice.He is the host of This Week in Voice and Executive producer of Project Voice.Links and Resources in this EpisodeVoice MastersPlay Crack the Code HereTrinity AudioThe Gaming Observer Flash Briefingwww.TheGamingObserver.comAdrian Simple on LinkedinAdrian Simple on Twitterwww.TheWaveColumbus.comwww.Orbita.aiwww.VoiceTechPodcast.comwww.VoiceTechPodcast.com/Newsletterwww.VoiceBot.aiwww.VoiceBot.ai/InsiderOther useful resources:Voice in Canada: The Flash BriefingComplete List of Alexa CommandsAlexa-Enabled and Controlled Devices in CanadaTeri Fisher on TwitterAlexa in Canada on TwitterAlexa in Canada Facebook PageAlexa in Canada Community Group on FacebookAlexa in Canada on InstagramPlease leave a review on iTunesShopping on Amazon.ca See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

2019 started out with unbounded optimism around voice technology with rapid smart speaker adoption and Google announcing over 1 billion devices supported the Assistant. It continued with Microsoft pulling Cortana from consumer use case and Samsung adding new capabilities to Bixby while Amazon and Google rapidly expanded features. Then, we had the negative stories about contractors listening to voice assistant conversations and threats of new security vulnerabilities for smart speakers. The year is concluding with new products and continued robust sales of everything with a voice assistant. Milkana Brace, CEO of Jargon, Ravi Lal, CEO of Voxly Digital, and Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai join host Bret Kinsella breaking down the stories from 2019 and discussing what mattered and what didn't over the past year. 

Privacy and security issues associated with voice assistants have been the biggest stories in the industry so far in 2019. Joining host Bret Kinsella are Rani Molla, the lead data reporter for Recode, Todd Mozer, CEO of Sensory, and Martin Lens-FitzGerald of Open Voice and several other voice-related projects. Molla offers the media perspective, Mozer a 25 year veteran of the industry with in-depth knowledge of privacy and security issues offers some unique insights and Lens-FitzGerald tackles the questions from a European viewpoint. It's a holiday season discussion focused on whether consumers actually care about the intersection of voice assistants, privacy, and security and where we are headed.

Clothes manufacturers are starting to build voice technology into their garments, while Amazon's new doorbell tech allows it to have autonomous conversations with whoever's at the door. This week, Adrian Weckler goes through some of the latest developments in voice technology from companies like Google, Amazon and Nuance. He's joined by Bret Kinsella, founder of Voicebot.ai and commentator of the year on voice technology as defined by the Alexa Conference. For more from the Big Tech show you can visit the show page at: www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-big-tech-show/ The Big Tech show is in association with Magnet Networks.

Amazon held its annual Alexa product launch event in September 2019 and there were some expected announcements along with a few surprises. Hearables, smart glasses, smart home, Samuel L. Jackson, Alexa Auto and many more topics were covered in more than 80 announcements. Breaking it all down for you this week are Amazon VP of smart home Daniel Rausch, USA Today's Jefferson Graham, Chris Albrecht of The Spoon, and Ben Fox Rubin from CNET. Voicebot's Bret Kinsella also offers his "hot take" on the key themes of significance from the event. 

Bret Kinsella, the editor of the Voicebot.ai website, sits down with Jefferson Graham in Seattle to help make sense of the 80 new products Amazon announced this week.

Transitioning with your customer in the digital realm before it’s too late – businesses, prepare for voice search by @vickiemaris #teachinspireconnect #agiledigitalbiz Agile Digital Business Episode 12 featuring news, references and commentary about the voice platform and voice search   From the Resources Handout prepared for a conference session talk in June 2019; revised for a talk in September 2019   2:56 Articles and blog posts on voice search Voice Search is Coming. Is Your Business Ready? How voice search will revolutionize your business – Article in Inc. https://www.inc.com/magazine/201906/amy-webb/voice-search-optimization-alexa-smart-speaker-retail-shopping.html 3:08 Why Tech Giants Are So Desperate to Provide Your Voice Assistant An HBR article by Bret Kinsella about why Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others are investing in voice technology. “Voice assistants represent the third UI and technology platform shift of the past three decades, following the web in the 1990s and smartphones about 10 years ago…The shift to voice doesn’t require any training. Users simply ‘speak’ as they do naturally.” 3:20 Voice Search Statistics, Facts and Trends 2019 for Online Marketers “Voice search and SEO is not the next big thing; it is today’s big thing.” In this blog post by Bradley Shaw, learn more about voice search predictions and data, from voice accuracy to audiobook data to uses of searches prior to a visit to a local business. https://seoexpertbrad.com/voice-search-statistics/ 3:35Hey Google, Alexa, Siri and Higher Ed Impact on how we deliver, search for and market higher education. An article in Higher Ed by Ray Schroeder, Dec. 12, 2018 https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/hey-google-alexa-siri-and-higher-ed 3:46 The holidays ushered in a smart speaker explosion starring Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant: Smart speaker sales grew 78 percent in 2018. Rani Molla wrote this blog post on Vox on Jan. 8, 2019 to review the statistics surrounding the explosive growth of smart speakers in the market.  https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18173696/amazon-alexa-google-assistant-smart-speaker-sales-npr 4:04  Foursquare wants to know how creepy you think its new “Hypertrending” feature is The above is the title of a blog post on 9To5Mac from March 10, 2019. It addresses the approach taken by the Foursquare app company to test how readers feel about the app’s ability to heat mat the locations of people at restaurants and other businesses in Austin, Texas. https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/10/foursquare-hypertrending-feature 4:17 Who’s listening when you talk to your Google Assistant? This is an article in Wired in July 2019 that covers the topic of “who is listening to your conversations” from your Google Home Assistant. Google has made a statement about its process of having contractors review .2 percent of the recorded conversations. They say the data is not associated with an individual user of the assistant when it is being reviewed. To read more: https://www.wired.com/story/whos-listening-talk-google-assistant/   Alexa FAQs For instructions about the commands to use when talking to Alexa on a Smart Speaker, and its many capabilities, visit this FAQ page in Amazon. https://amzn.to/2ZAnQFS To review your voice recordings in the Alexa app: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602040   Google Voice Search FAQs For instructions on how to manage your Google Voice and Audio Activity, visit the “Data and personalization” link in the left-hand navigation of your Google Account.   Books 4:27Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins by Mark W. Schaefer – I read this book in Spring 2019, and took copious notes. Mark was the closing keynote at Social Media Marketing World conference in 2019. I recommend that every marketer and every business leader who has a marketing leader reporting to them should read this book. We are in a different marketing environment today than even just a few years ago. Years of marketing experience in business (or academia) and old methods for buying and placing digital advertising, and ways of engaging with customers are causing customers to block ads and/or to seek education and entertainment that is ad-free. If you aren’t already changing your plans currently to align with the new marketing revolution, this book will cause you to re-think what you’ve been doing in your marketing efforts.   Podcast Episodes 6:27Book Marketing: Voice Search For Authors With Miral Sattar – The Creative Penn Podcast Joanna Penn, author and podcast host, interviews Miral Sattar about the steps you can take in 2019 to help voice-activated assistants find your book upon request. In this episode, they touch on a variety of subjects from updating meta data on your web pages so that the snippets are answering the questions that people are asking in their attempts to find your books, to the importance of the audiobook format, to the differences between on-screen searches that are typed in a search engine such as Google, to asking a voice-activated assistant for a result. 7:179 Ways That Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Disrupt Authors and the Publishing Industry You don’t have to be a book author to benefit from this episode of The Creative Penn Podcast. Joanna Penn tracks through a list she has created that indicates we’re on the cusp of disruptions for authors and the publishing industry. Penn runs a multi-six-figure business as an independent author and speaker. She is published in 86 countries. Her energy and enthusiasm about AI is contagious. The insights she shares as she outlines the ways that authors and the publishing industry could be effected can provide ideas for your own business plan for the future. 9:30 Understanding Voice Search and the Future of SEO For interesting insights in to how voice is changing the “search” industry and what we might need to be expecting as businesses of the future, take a listen to this episode of Skill Up podcast. This is another episode that I’ve played more than once so that I could take notes on my second time through. Epsiode 7: https://www.hubspot.com/podcasts/skill-up/s01/e07-voice-search-future-seo   10:08 Measuring Position Zero’s Impact on Your Business – Searchmetrics Podcast, Episode 7 This is a discussion on the difference between rich snippets and featured snippets. There is no process for submitting for featured snippets. Are you optimizing your content? Are you formatting your content in a way that it can answer a specific question? https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/podcast-voices-of-search-rich-and-featured-snippets/   10:38 Businesses – Prepare for Voice Search – Agile Digital Business podcast You may have heard of voice search, or use of voice-activated assistants such as Alexa which is the assistant for the Amazon Echo smart speaker. There is also the Google Home Assistant or Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, and others. As people gravitate towards voice for search, it has brought about a marketing niche that is often referred to as voice search marketing. Voice has been referred to as the next big thing. The data is showing that it IS the big thing we need to be preparing for in business and marketing of our products and services. Vickie Maris, host of Agile Digital Business podcast, discusses trends and definitions related to “voice,” in Episode 10 of the show. Season 2 of the podcast is focused on voice and voice first searches, and how businesses can prepare for the platform. Find all episodes at the blog: https://vickiemaris2.libsyn.com 12:05 Voicebot.ai For a look at the research available about voice, and to learn more about the technical side of the platform, I highly recommend viewing the website and the white papers available from Bret Kinsella and the team at Voicebot. Bret is also the host of the Voicebot podcast. Take a listen to an episode and visit the website. You won’t regret it. https://voicebot.ai/author/bret/   12:44 Reminder about the homework assignment for taking steps to update your website for "voice." It is available for download at my Patreon account, https://patreon.com/vickiemaris     Sample of recent tweets around the hashtags: #voiceactivatedsearch and #voicesearch SEMrush - @SEMrush  - Sept. 10, 2019 #VoiceSearch started off as a hit-or-miss concept. It’s now a hugely popular way of helping us go about our daily lives. @himanshurauthan uncovers 7 strategies of how you can optimize your site to return more answers from voice searches.* Audeliss Search - @AudelissPeople – June 17, 2019   Voice-activated systems are a $49 billion market. Now @Google is using #AI to make #voice recognition work for #people with #disabilities: (link: https://buff.ly/2FaQjKr) buff.ly/2FaQjKr @Forbes #inclusion AIMC Biz Solutions @aimcbizolution – June 14, 2019  As of 2019, 20% of all Google searches are voice-activated – a number that’s expected to leap to 50% as early as 2020. Voice search is here to stay. It’s growing – and businesses who don’t embrace it now are going to be left scrambling in the very near future.   13:46Webinar Replays Podcasting in the Age of Voice Webinar – Aug. 26, 2019 Pragmatic and WIT Lingo hosted an webinar with several guests that provides interesting insights to the “voice” scene in Q3 2019. https://youtu.be/C2uY1dGRIZE 14:31Glossary of Terms  AI – Artificial Intelligence Sample tweet from @Capgemini (Intelligent Automation Platform) about AI: Explore how #AI based insights enable wealth and #AssetManagement firms to leverage the strengths of the advisors, uncover areas of improvement and promote best practices. 15:20CCPA – California Consumer Protection Act Starts Jan. 1, 2020 - https://ccpa.jebbit.com/ “By its terms, the CCPA protects the private information of California residents even when they’re outside the state. This means that, if you sell anything to or market anything to or gather any data on California residents, you’re subject to the CCPA’s provisions and need to be ready.” Kerry O’Shea Gorgone (guest post on the Grow blog by Mark Schaefer) 16:05 Flash Briefing – A Flash Briefing is a term related to Amazon Skills for Alexa-assisted devices. It’s a short (10 minutes or less) news update that Alexa can read or play. 16:25 GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation Enforced May 25, 2018 In statements on the EU GDPR website it says that the GDPR is “designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe and to protect and empower all EU citizens’ data, and reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy.” https://eugdpr.org/   16:57 Intent – The meaning of whatever a user has verbalized to a voice-activated assistant.   17:04 Machine Learning – It’s an offshoot of artificial intelligence. Machine learning makes assumptions that machines can learn from data. As patterns are determined, decisions get made with little or no human involvement. 17:18 Position Zero – The top search result in a screen-based, keyword search in a search engine such as Google. It’s above the ads; it’s above the snippets. It’s the position used in voice search. 17:35Screen Search – A screen search is the type of Internet searching that was previously thought of as traditional. It involves typing of questions, key words or phrases in a search engine such as Google or Bing. A method of typing and a screen are involved. The search results are displayed in multiples per page. 17:58SEM – Search engine marketing 18:02 SEO – Search engine optimization SERP – Search engine results page* 18:05 Skill (Amazon), Action (Google), Capsule (Bixby for Samsung) – Amazon calls these “voice-driven capabilities” that can run on their respective platforms. Google calls these Actions. For Bixby, they are capsules. Consider the Amazon Alexa Skill for an example. I’ve created an Alexa Skill for my podcast, Agile Digital Business, to make it easy for Amazon device users to ask Alexa to play my Flash Briefing for the podcast. The Alexa Skill can be found on search in the Amazon Skill store. If a user knows the name of the Skill they are looking for, they can request it of the assistant by saying, “Enable [name of Skill].” For the podcast, I set the Alexa Skill up with the blue print provided for a Flash Briefing. It saved me from having to code, and it enables a user to search in their Alexa app for the specific Skill to add to their Flash Briefing.* 19:05 Smart Speaker – A smart speaker is also known as a voice-activated assistant, and several other terms. Examples include the Echo by Amazon (assistant is Alexa) or the Home by Google. Sonic Branding – Phrases such as “tone of the copy,” “find your voice,” and “it should sound like our brand,” have a literal meaning in this era of voice search. Sonic branding is what your brand sounds like as it is responding, verbally, to your customers.* 19:22 Utterance – This is the term used to describe the vocalizations a user has with a voice-activated assistant. 19:31 Voice – Any interaction that allows you to control a computer program using natural speech. 19:40 Voice Commerce – Transactions for goods and services conducted via voice search and commands given to the assistant in the smart speaker. Users can connect their accounts such as Amazon. 19:55 Voice First – The phrase, voice first, refers to the first in a string of searches, starting with a voice search, that a user conducts. They may go to a screen search after getting an initial response from an assistant. 20:11 Voice Search – A voice search is a question asked by a person talking to their digital assistant (voice-activated speaker or voice-activated assistant) such as Siri or Alexa. The assistant uses meta data to return one result that best aligns with the question that was asked. 20:46 Voice User Interface (VUI) – This is an interface that allows a person using voice for search to interact with a device when there isn’t a screen involved. 21:00 BIO – Vickie Maris Voice first, voice platforms and preparing content so that it is more discoverable in voice search are topics that have the focus of Vickie Maris, author, speaker, digital marketer and idea coach. Vickie is the host and producer of Agile Digital Business. Season 2 is devoted to the fast-moving adoption of smart speakers and uses of voice-activated assistants in a variety of forms. Through her podcast and conference talks, she helps business owners and marketers plan their transition of content for improved discoverability in voice search. Vickie has also studied and taught social media marketing and engagement, and development of online learning experiences in scalable business models for executive education units. Her career spans over 30 years in industry and academia. At the university, she is responsible for the sales, marketing and evolution of non-degree programs for business people in leadership, supervision, and business analytics. She has also held roles in marketing and business development in the fields of agriculture and engineering at Purdue University where she led a team that developed and marketed online certifications in Lean Six Sigma and project management. The online courses attracted over 1,400 business professionals per year. Vickie has served as a communications director for a non-profit and as an account manager for an advertising and public relations firm. She holds her Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma. Her degrees from Purdue include a B.S. degree in Agricultural Communications and MS Ed in Learning Design and Technology. Vickie is a published author and a recording artist. Her books, podcasts and music can be found in Amazon, Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio, Spotify, Pandora and other digital locations. She and her co-writer/musician husband, Scott Greeson, reside on their farm with their llamas, Connemara pony, and cat, Frank. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _  23:04 To find the resources that I mention in my conference sessions, search on #teachinspireconnect and/or #agiledigitalbiz. You’re invited to connect with me in LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/vickiemaris; emails = vmaris@nd.edu or vickiemaris@gmail.com   * Indicates a content reference that was added after this document was audio recorded as part of Episode 12 of Agile Digital Business podcast. If you’d prefer to listen to my recommendations about these resources, plus my added commentary, check out Episode 12 of the podcast. The episodes of the podcast are available here: https://vickiemaris2.libsyn.com

On today's episode, you'll hear Keri Roberts chat with one of the top leaders in voice and the creator of Voicebot.ai, Bret Kinsella. You'll hear him talk about how he started Voicebot, why businesses need to be considering voice now based on research and how SEO for voice is working now and will work in the future.

t’s Friday August 23rd. Welcome to This Week In Podcasting where we discuss this week's podcasting news and tips, all in under 10 minutes. This episode is provided by Sounder.fm, the Smartest way to Podcast. Let’s get started.This week we discuss, Spotify adds podcast playlists, Smart Speaker Podcast Challenges, and the top random podcasting thought of the week.Spotify has announced another podcast related feature that allows listeners to add podcasts as a playlist on their iPhone app. Podcast playlists can feature multiple episodes from the same podcast and, perhaps more importantly, episodes from *different* podcasts. These can also be shared with your friends.According to InsideRadio and Voicebot, there are approximately 66 million Americans that own a smart speaker. However, as it relates to podcasts, only 40% have tried to listen to a podcast on their smart speaker and only 26% have been successful. Bret Kinsella, CEO of Voicebot, says he believes that’s because most podcast listeners simply need to learn a new habit. “Most podcast listening today is people accustomed to listening on the smartphone,” he said. “They have to become aware of it.” The good news is that when podcast fans do cozy up to smart speakers, they’re likely to listen to more shows. “It’s incremental listening,” he added. “Yes, it’s a small amount, but each of these segments grows every year.” This week’s random podcasting thought of the week is about the history of podcasts. How did all this get started?You can trace the birth of podcasts back to Dave Winer and Adam Curry, the godfathers of the podcasting industry. Dave Winer was then a software developer and an RSS evangelist. Podcasting came to fruition in 2000 as a result of a meeting between Dave and Adam where they were discussing the distribution of automated media.

David Isbitski joined the Alexa team in early 2015, shortly after the Amazon Echo launched and before Alexa Skills Kit or the skill store. When he started, it was all about developer office hours, slack groups, and meetups. Today, it is more often about conference keynotes and boardrooms. Bret Kinsella interviewed Dave at the Voice 19 Conference to get a sense about how things have changed over the past five years and what that means going forward for voice assistant adoption. Isbitski is currently chief evangelist for Alexa and before 2015 he held a similar role for the Amazon App Store. Prior to that, he spent 6 years as a technical evangelist at Microsoft and earlier in his career he was a technology manager at J&J and a Principal at BT. 

Dave Kemp from Oaktree Products is an expert on hearables, which are smart, wireless in-ear devices such as AirPods. And they’re probably the future of voice, more so than smart speakers.Dave and Emily talked about ambient computing from Alexa to wearables to the connected car. And interestingly we touched on the dire need for curated content to replace the noisy and overwhelming experience of social media today. Plus, hear how Alexa Flash Briefing might be the first iteration of that improved content experience.Topics:Hearables including AirPods and competitor products such as Samsung Galaxy Buds, Pixel Buds, Microsoft Surface headset5:10 Amazon hearables in late half of 2019 (competitor to AirPods)Apple's new H1 chip in v2 AirPods shows that Apple is dedicated to AirPods for the long term (beyond using the W1 chip from Apple Watch), now AirPods have their own chip architecture just for hearablesFirst application is "Hey Siri" activation (no tapping required)7:10 Bret Kinsella helped people visualize importance of the smart speaker as training wheels, a conditional device to make people comfortable with the voice assistant, offloading smartphone related tasks to VAs. But hearables are really riding the bike.The near-field voice assistant is key (smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home and Apple HomePod are far field)9:00 We have to recognize there has been a dramatic behavioral shift since 2016It has becomes socially acceptable to wear in-ear devices all the time9:20 Form factors are developing: earrings (fashionable hearables) and Bose AR frames with speakers near the ear could be the future9:40 Hearing aids as a form factor allow for usage that is super discreet - moving away from stigma today and to all-day usagePassively consuming content while synced to digital environment - all day usage is plausible10:30 Emily's Bluetooth headache - how can we minimize exposure to EMFs from a health standpoint?11:00 AirPods case could become the receiver vs streaming content from phone to AirPods. Content could be housed in the AirPod case and streamed in a lower bandwidth from the edge vs the cloud.11:20 Outfitting our bodies with technology - what are the health implications for heavy EMFs? TBD…12:25 Flash Briefing and passive consumption of contentFlash Briefing is such a gemDave’s Flash Briefing is his daily blog post on futurear.co then the briefing is a 60 second tease about the blog post (a promotional vehicle to his blog post)Flash Briefing should be the star of the smart speaker - such a powerful use case14:00 This is the precursor to audio social media, consuming on demand the content you want to consume from your favorite sources (curated feed)Amazon should be featuring Flash Briefing more but now it's relegated to the Settings area of the Alexa appHow can we put the Flash Briefing idea on other platforms?15:15 We are so overwhelmed with social media- what if you could Google Reader / RSS all that content?Ways to better curate your attention and cut out the noiseWe love Twitter but it requires so much parsing - what does the future hold and how can voicefirst make passive content consumption better?Get in touch with Dave Kemp:Twitter @Oaktree_DaveFuturear.coFuturEar Radio - Flash Briefing on AlexaThank you to our sponsor, Trinity Audio. I added the Trinity Audio player to my blog on beetlemoment.com and within two weeks I saw a 16% increase in my engagement rate. Anyone with a website can add the FREE Trinity Audio player to your text with one short snippet of code. It’s a win-win for content creators and site visitors. Meet your audience where they’re headed: a voice first world. Visit trinityaudio.ai1-click subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Voicebot recently surveyed over 300 marketers to determine their enthusiasm and activity around voice assistants as a marketing channel. That report includes 20 charts and 30 pages of analysis and can be downloaded at no cost at voicebot.ai/research. In this episode, host Bret Kinsella is joined by David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices.com, and Ava Mutchler of Voicebot.ai for an in-depth discussion of the key findings. The discussion was originally recorded as a webinar and used a format that allows podcast listeners to follow along.  How many marketers have launched voice apps? Which voice assistants do they favor today and which will be the best long-term bets? What types of voice apps are most common? These and several other topics are reviewed. It's time to go data diving and figure out marketer sentiment and activity in the voice app ecosystem. 

221 Who Uses Voice Assistants While Shopping? by Bret Kinsella, voicebot.aiThis podcast is also available in the UK US Canada Australia and India as a Flash Briefing on @amazonecho devices and the #Alexa app (even w/out a device). Search for The Smart Speakers. ‪The links referred to are at: https://www.thesmartspeakers.com/links ‬‪Produced by Peter Stewart (@TweeterStewart) ‬‪#Voice #voicefirst #smartspeakers ‬

Audio Museum of Art Alexa Skill Provides Content Optimized for the Smart Speaker ExperienceThis podcast is also available in the UK US Canada Australia and India as a Flash Briefing on @amazonecho devices and the #Alexa app (even w/out a device). Search for The Smart Speakers. ‪The links referred to are at: https://www.thesmartspeakers.com/links ‬‪Produced by Peter Stewart (@TweeterStewart) ‬‪#Voice #voicefirst #smartspeakers ‬Source by Bret Kinsella, voicebot.ai

Matt Ware and Lachlan Pottenger of FIRST Digital in Australia join Ava Mutchler and Bret Kinsella to discuss the results of the 2019 Australia Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report. The adoption rate is fast, Google Home dominates, and smart speaker users employ the devices with more frequency than their American peers. The Australia experience is instructive for how smart speakers and voice assistants are seeing adoption in countries that have come online after the U.S. We talk use cases, differences with the U.S., and what consumers really care about. 

Smart Speaker Owners Agree That Questions, Music, and Weather are Killer Apps. What Comes Next?This podcast is also available in the UK US Canada Australia and India as a Flash Briefing on @amazonecho devices and the #Alexa app (even w/out a device). Search for The Smart Speakers. ‪The links referred to are at: https://www.thesmartspeakers.com/links ‬- [ ] ‪Produced by Peter Stewart (@TweeterStewart) e‬‪#Voice #voicefirst #smartspeakers ‬Source by Bret Kinsella, voicebot.ai

This episode is all about US smart speaker adoption data and trends and what it tells us about the future of voice assistant use worldwide. Jeff McMahon (CEO Voicify), Jason Fields (Chief Strategy Officer Voicify), and Ava Mutchler (Voicebot) join host Bret Kinsella discussing data from the recent 2019 U.S. Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report. Topics include the smart speaker rate of adoption, killer app use cases, device market share, changes from 2018, and voice app discovery challenges and solutions. 

Hosts Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany travel to Las Vegas for CES 2019 and chat about what it means to have smart speakers in our homes and as part of our families. Do we need to be kind to them? Director of Product Management for the Google Assistant Lillian Rincon and Editor of Voicebot.ai Bret Kinsella join Ashley and Kaitlyn to give their expert takes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CES 2019 officially kicks off today, but Voicebot already has eight interviews with a select group of voice innovators exhibiting at the conference this year. The Sunday before CES, 150 companies are selected to present their innovations to the media. Bret Kinsella and Ava Mutchler interviewed founders and executives at iFlytek, Woobo, Pillar Learning, Hi-Mirror, Moen, Flo, Mycroft, and Snips. We learn about voice translators, social robots, voice-interactive toys, voice in the bathroom, and independent voice platforms. It's a wide variety of voice software infrastructure and consumer applications. If you want to stay in touch with the story-behind-the-chaos that is CES, listen to this special edition of the Voicebot Podcast. 

Bret Kinsella, the editor of the voice technology blog Voicebot.ai, talks with Recode’s Rani Molla about the future of virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant. In this episode: (01:02) Kinsella’s background; (05:07) The history of voice tech; (11:19) How many people have smart speakers and what do they do with them?; (14:51) Music and podcasts on smart speakers; (16:51) Smart homes and voice; (20:51) Voice shopping; (24:40) Why brands are all in on voice; (28:04) Positioning products for voice searches; (31:33) Pay to play in search results; (34:11) Amazon’s microwave; (38:30) Other recently announced voice hardware; (43:18) Is this a privacy nightmare waiting to happen?; (45:48) Where will voice tech be in five years? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bret Kinsella, the editor of the Voicebot.AI website, fills in for the vacationing Jefferson Graham and reports about why consumer robots haven't struck a chord with the public, but Alexa has.

This week's episode focuses on voice AI events, products and news from the first half of 2018. We discuss Apple's announcements from WWDC and whether it was a big deal or a snoozer, the shift in smart speaker market share to Google, the impact of Google Duplex, what Amazon has done and should be doing and more. This week's guests are Tobias Goebel of Aspect Software, Pat Higbie of XAPPmedia, Chris Messina a developer and product guru best known for inventing the hashtag and Voicebot's Ava Mutchler and Bret Kinsella. We don't just talk about what has happened, we go deep into what it all means. Not to be missed.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Bret Kinsella, the editor and publisher of Voicebot.ai, the top news and commentary site on all things voice and A.I.Welcome Bret Kinsella!As someone who’s been working in technology since the mid 90’s, Bret has seen how the biggest technologies today, web, mobile and social, evolved. He founded Voicebot.ai in September 2016, after seeing the potential of voice-first technology in interactive voice ads.When he’s not speaking at one of the numerous conferences he’s invited to, Bret is hosting the Voicebot.ai podcast.Below you will find a summary of the important points that we discussed. Enjoy!What is Voicebot.ai?Voicebot.ai is a hub for all things to do with voice technology. They have built a large community around their website; On it, you can find voice technology-related research and news. They also have a popular podcast, where they interview people who are changing the industry. Unlike other tech blogs, Voicebot takes a more scientific approach to data and research.What trends have you seen in Canada?Canadians have embraced smart speakers much faster than Americans. After three years in the market, only 7% of Americans owned a smart speaker. In Canada, by contrast, where Google Home launched in May-Juneof last year and the Amazon Echo just a few months later, the adoption rate was at 8%, at least as of March, when the survey was conducted.How is market share going to play into all of this?It’s hard to predict how market share is going to shift. What we can see, though, is that market share is diversifying more quickly as new companies come up with new smart speakers. In the US, as of the end of 2016, the Echo (which at that time had been in the market for about a year) had 93% market share; the other 7% was held by Google Home, which had launched just two months earlier.Things are shifting more quickly here in Canada. For example, just this last quarter, Google Home ended with 63% market share and Amazon with 30%. There’s a 7% overlap, these are people who own both Google Home and the Echo. That’s very telling about the interest people have in the technology.How is voice technology going to change in the future?As voice technology gains traction and people start seeing it in night shows, Youtube, social media, etc., they’ll start buying more smart speakers. While the first wave of adopters might have been part of a niche, the market will expand quickly into different age groups and families. As the market diversifies, smart assistants like Alexa will get different, more specific skills tailored for those new people.Where is voice technology going?When thinking about voice technology, it’s good to keep in mind that this is a new interface. Just like the iPhone did away with the keyboard, voice will do away with touch. Voice is unbounded. Voice technology is still defining itself, and, in 5 to 10 years, we’ll likely see it disrupting other less convenient technologies. List of resources mentioned in this episode:VoiceBot.ai WebsiteBret Kinsella on TwitterTeri Fisher on TwitterAlexa in Canada on TwitterAlexa in Canada Facebook PageAlexa in Canada Community Group on FacebookAlexa in Canada on InstagramPlease leave a review on iTunesShopping on Amazon.ca See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

May 29, 2018 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Voicebot, PullString and RAIN collaborated on the Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report 2018. Today's special episode breaks down the findings and extends the discussion to offer additional perspectives. PullString COO Michael Fitzpatrick and Greg Hedges, vice president of emerging experiences for RAIN Agency, join Voicebot's Ava Mutchler and host Bret Kinsella in this week's panel discussion. Topics include: total U.S. user base, appeal for young and elderly consumers, U.S. device market share, use cases, voice commerce, direct-to-consumer opportunities and much more.  

After a production delay, Apple's HomePod speaker, its answer to Google Home and Amazon Echo, hits stores on 2/9. But it's more than three times the cost of most competitors, and has limited audio options. Why buy it? Jefferson Graham previews with Bret Kinsella, the editor of the Voicebot.ai website.

Editorial Director, AmazonCrossing Interview starts at 18:00 and ends at 43:42 “One of the magical things about publishing is that when you get together with other people who work in this industry and immediately we share a common bond, this passion for bringing books to readers. It's not unique. It is really wonderful to stand in a room full of people who are putting everything on the line toward that effort every day and who are excited to hear about the work that we're doing to bring more diversity to literature through translation.” (Photo by Dean Whitmore) News “How the Kindle was designed through 10 years and 16 generations” by Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch - November 20, 2017 Chris Green on The Kindle Chronicles in April, 2016 Firmware updates page for Amazon devices Tech Tips Fire HD 8 - $30 off for Black Friday/Cyber Monday Fire HD 10 - $50 off for Black Friday/Cyber Monday “YouTube is Back on Amazon Echo Show” by Bret Kinsella at Voicebot - November 21, 2017 Eddie Mikell's Echo Dot setup for the car (YouTube) CoolStream Duo Bluetooth adapter ($29.99) at Amazon.com Interview with Gabriella Page-Fort Books published by AmazonCrossing Chad Post's Three Percent blog at University of Rochester The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch, translated by Lee Chadeayne The Glass Blower Trilogy by Petra Durst-Benning, translated by Samuel Willcocks The Great Passage by Shion Miura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan, translated by Yuri Machkasov P.S. From Paris by Marc Levy, translated by Sam Taylor A number of titles from Petra Durst-Benning The House by the River by Lena Manta, translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft (discovered through the AmazonCrossing submissions portal) A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa, translated by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown The Honest Spy by Andreas Kollender, translated by Steve Anderson An American Princess by Annejet van der Zijl, translated by Michele Hutchison The Judgment of Richard Richter by Igor Štiks, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac (discovered through the submissions site) Go by Kazuki Kaneshiro, translated by Takami Nieda (discovered through the submissions site) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett [Kindle in Motion] “AmazonCrossing Editorial Director Gabriella Page-Fort Named 2017 PW Star Watch ‘Super Star'” by Porter Anderson at Publishing Perspectives - September 6, 2017 Content Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle, illustrated by Jill McElmurry The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Editor and publisher of voice technology / AI news and commentary website Voicebot.ai Bret Kinsella is the sole guest on this week of This Week In Voice, as he and host Bradley Metrock discuss the growth of smart speaker sales in FY17, Amazon's Echo hardware being sold in Kohl's retail stores, Samsung's Bixby and Alibaba's Tmall Genie, and even a discussion on whether Apple's HomePod can be competitive in the marketplace, and Bret Kinsella's favorite thing Amazon has done in voice technology so far this year. It's a can't-miss episode. This Week In Voice is hosted by Bradley Metrock (CEO, Score Publishing) and is part of the VoiceFirst.FM podcast network.