Enterprise AI Platform Veritone Integrates Speechmatics’ Speech Recognition and Transcription Tech
Speechmatics is adding its speech recognition technology to enterprise artificial intelligence firm Veritone’s aiWARE platform. Businesses can now apply Speechmatics’ tech to transcribe and analyze vocal conversations while keeping data secure in the aiWARE operating system.
Secure Chat
Speechmatics offers enterprise services a speech recognition platform flexible enough to understand and transcribe informal conversations during meetings and conferences. The company’s algorithms transcribe millions of hours of conversation in nearly three dozen languages and a vast array of accents every month. The British company has been expanding rapidly over the last year or so, fueled in part by an approximately $8.3 million funding round led by AlbionVC last October. The ongoing COVID-19 health crisis and the resulting explosion in digital meetings and its attendant hazards is likely an indirect contributor as well. Speech analytics software maker Daisee and contact call center platform Puzzel recently signed deals with Speechmatics, and the company is adding speech recognition to navigation software platform what3words through a joint API launched at the beginning of the year.
Veritone built its cloud-based services on using machine learning to turn raw data of any form, including audio, into more useful insights. The publicly-traded Veritone had had a very successful year despite the economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with its stock rising steadily this year until it dipped 23.8% in July. The six-year-old company is not yet profitable, but the stock price is rising again after it reported its highest revenue ever during the last quarter. Though Veritone already offered clients, including the U.S. Department of Justice, audio and video transcription processing for analysis, the company has lacked the ability to turn any “unstructured” conversation into a format that aiWARE could examine. Speechmatics brings precisely that to the table, according to Veritone.
“Automatic speech recognition technology adds tremendous value to aiWARE and the applications built upon it, taking unstructured voice data and turning it into actionable insights and data,” Veritone head of government, legal and compliance Jon Gacek said in a statement. “With technology from innovators like Speechmatics available as a cognitive service within aiWARE, we are giving our customers access to highly accurate speech-to-text, and high quality, real-time transcription functionality.”
Enterprising Conversation
A lot of organizations are moving to acquire, create, or invest in variations of speech recognition and transcription tech. In the course of a couple of months, customer feedback analysis platform Medallia spent $59 million to buy voice transcription startup Voci Technologies, while Outreach released a voice-controlled virtual assistant named Kaia for transcribing and analyzing sales calls, and speech recognition startup Deepgram landed a strategic investment from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the U.S. intelligence community. The arrangement with Speechmatics shows how Veritone also sees the value of voice AI in the context of business strategy. Technical developments and timing have accelerated adoption, but there’s a broad base of interest in speech recognition and transcription technology that Speechmatics can leverage for partnerships like this.
“Only in the last few years has speech-to-text technology become accurate enough for businesses to truly utilize, incorporate it as part of their business workflows and deliver material benefits,” Speechmatics vice president Jeff Palmer said in a statement. “Speechmatics is the most accurate, any-context speech recognition engine on the market, whilst also offering a broad range of languages and the secure, on-premises deployments that are essential for our customer’s needs. Veritone offers the most comprehensive operating system for AI in the market so naturally we are thrilled to be partnering with them.”
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