SoundHound Expands Houndify’s Language Support with Acapela Group Partnership
SoundHound’s voice AI platform, Houndify, is getting new voices and text-to-speech (TTS) language support thanks to a recent partnership with Acapela Group. As of last month, Houndify can now deliver its responses in over 100 different voices and 32 languages, including five different dialects of English and three of Swedish for example. In addition to giving clients the ability to choose an “off-the-shelf” voice to meet their needs, they will now also have the option to develop customized, branded voices.
A Global Text-to-Speech Solution
Even in just one language, developing a solid text-to-speech solution is a challenge. To accurately synthesize speech, the machine has to be able to understand the context of what is reading to be truly comprehensible. The new partnership allows Acapela to take advantage of Houndify’s artificial intelligence and for SoundHound to expand its language and speech offerings through Acapela’s TTS technology. It will also put more users on the Houndify platform, which can only increase its intelligence and natural language understanding.
Houndify’s new language capabilities also give both companies an advantage in the global marketplace against the larger competitors like Amazon and Google. In addition to supporting more languages than Amazon, Houndify is also an open-source software that enables developers and businesses to retain and control their brand and user data. This could be a key market differentiator for companies in direct competition with Amazon or Google or for those companies that are wary of sharing their user data. The customizable capabilities of Houndify are also a draw. This is reportedly the reason Hyundai chose to integrate with Hound despite the fact that it had already integrated with Amazon Alexa. SoundHound has already proven that there is a need in the US market for an independent voice assistant, and now the company looks to prove it on a global scale.
Introducing The Voicebot Podcast Episode 1 with SoundHound’s Katie McMahon
