Speech Technology eWeekly - July 11, 2018

Speech Technology News

Facebook Acquires Bloomsbury AI

Facebook, which has been beleaguered by issues regarding privacy and security in recent months, has bought Bloomsbury AI, a British company that specializes in natural language processing.

Google Testing Duplex in Call Centers

Google Duplex raised eyebrows with its maybe-too-lifelike chat capabilities when CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrated it at a conference. Now, The Information reports, "Some big companies are in the very early stages of testing Google's technology for use in other applications, such as call centers, where it might be able to replace some of the work currently done by humans, according to a person familiar with the plans."

LEDvance Launches Dimmable Filament LED Bulb in Europe

Wish your lights would respond to the sound of your voice? LEDvance is here to help. After rolling out its voice-dimmable filament LED lamps that work with Apple gear in North America earlier this year, the bulbs are now coming to Europe.

Columbia University Wins the 2018 Atos IT Challenge with Artificial Intelligence Project

With a solution called BTM (Behind The Meter) two French and Indian students from Columbia University have developed a service presenting how AI and chatbots can be used in automated demand response applications for connected objects, reducing costs, and environmental footprint.

Interact

Speech Technology’s Continually Evolving Confidence Game

Advances in cognitive computing seek to improve on traditional rules-based algorithms and probability models—but the latter still know their stuff

Industry Voices

Video: Rules-Based Chatbot Design, Part 1: Syntactical and Semantical Analysis

Aspect's Andreas Volmer discusses key components of a rules-based approach to chatbot design based on a robust language model in Part 1 of this two-part series from SpeechTEK 2018.

Speech Analytics Will Cure Your Call DNA

Despite in-depth online intelligence, many companies are still struggling to engage with customers. Can call analytics help?