Toyota Will Be First to Try Cerence’s New Japanese Cloud Services
Toyota is first in line for Cerence’s new cloud services center in Japan, the latest of the vehicular AI developer’s blizzard of news this month. Cerennce’s cloud service centers are designed to improve voice assistant speed and efficiency. In Japan, Toyota voice AI users should find the experience more like talking to a human as the cloud services center boosts the AI’s speed and efficiency.
Clouds Over Japan
Toyota has been relying on Cerence as a voice assistant platform since 2014, well before it spun off of parent company Nuance. The new cloud services centers are, in some ways, a mark of how the technology has evolved. They are supposed to support the growing number and sophistication of Cerence’s features. Cerence wants Japanese drivers to feel comfortable interacting with AI, and reliable support of new features and faster response times are likely a good way to reach that goal. Cerence claims the cloud center will augment the AI platform’s many aspects, including speech recognition, text-to-speech, and natural language understanding. Most of the improvements will be hidden from drivers. Still, they may notice that Agent, the voice assistant incorporated into Toyota’s Connected Services, answers questions and completes tasks with less hesitation because of its direct connection to the cloud host.
“As expectations for AI-powered automotive assistants continue to expand for Japanese drivers and around the world, we are committed to growing and enhancing our offerings to meet their needs,” Cerence Regional Vice President Shojiro Kimura said in a statement. “The installation of our new cloud service center in Japan demonstrates our constant dedication to bringing a state-of-the-art experience to our Japanese OEM customers like Toyota Motor Corporation and their drivers.”
Cerence Speed
Speed has been Cerence’s watchword in many ways as 2021 began. While the last year or so saw a host of new features like a driver-customized wake word option, the synthetic voice generator Cerence Reader, and both the highly customizable Cerence Studio AI platfom and the relatively quick to launch Cerence ARK Assistant. January has arguably topped all of that. The new Cerence Drive 2.0, which revamped the entire platform for voice AI would have been a lot on its own, especially as it was tied to several additional features under the Cerence Cloud Services heading. But, the last couple of weeks have also brought out Cerence Look, which combines online databases and gaze-tracking cameras to turn a car’s voice assistant into a real-time tour guide, and the new Cerence Mobility Platform, which expands the voice AI platform beyond just cars, with motorcycles, scooters and even elevators all now possible places to interact with Cerence’s technology.
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