Looking back to the past year, we can see how voice technology is exponentially growing. Spending time at home, the lack of communication with the outside world, and the rise of our internet usage are a few elements influencing the adoption speed. As Brian Roemmele (president of Multiplex) said, the Voice-First sector will continue to be the fastest adopted technology in history.

We really love language, conversations, and sustainability at VUI.agency. More than 70% of our team are linguists and language experts so you can imagine that besides creating the next best voice assistant for top brands, we also have a lot of talks and debates on a lot of topics.

VUI.agency partnered with VocaliD, a successful US-based Voice AI company, offering synthesized  Voice personas with individuality, and not just robotized generic voices. Which is one of the best ways to end a year as a business?

Remember the last ghost from Charles Dickens’ famous tale A Christmas Carol? The one who drags the cold-hearted protagonist into a dark and gloomy Christmas future without saying a single word? This blog post will not carry on with that foreboding silence – quite the contrary. We want to take you on a journey into a bright future, into the year 2030, and outline a vision in which the technology we already use today will sweeten our holiday season. Let’s imagine the future of Christmas and smart homes together.

The pre-Christmas period is very emotional for many people. We reflect on the past year, taking stock of our situation, willing to start the new year fresh. Christmas time is about relaxing with our loved ones and enjoying the time off. As of December starts, we consciously put ourselves in a completely different mood.

In conversations with colleagues and customers, I often come across one question: “How human can or should a synthetic voice sound like?” Two statements usually stand opposite each other: “No, that sounds terrible, tinny and unnatural.” Vs. “That’s creepy when you don’t even hear that it’s actually a machine speaking.”

AI is coining many of today’s and even more of tomorrow’s technologies. As powerful as AI is, we need to keep in mind that it is only as good as its teachers and the data we feed it.

As a German person, I am used to having all kinds of user interfaces available in my own native language. Even though many devices, such as smart speakers, are first available on the English-language market, it usually does not take long for them to also arrive on the German market, featuring user interfaces that have been completely translated into German.