Amazon.com Inc. and more than 30 other industry partners unveiled a new Voice Interoperability Initiative to ensure users can access multiple voice services on a single device.
"The initiative is built around a shared belief that voice services should work seamlessly alongside one another on a single device, and that voice-enabled products should be designed to support multiple simultaneous wake words," Amazon said in a Sept. 24 statement. Other partners include Microsoft Corp., salesforce.com inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Tencent Holdings Ltd., Spotify Technology SA, Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and Baidu Inc.
The program is built around four priorities, including the development of voice services that work with others; building voice-enabled devices that promote choice and flexibility; releasing technologies and solutions that make it easier to integrate multiple voice services on a single product; and accelerating machine learning and conversational artificial intelligence research to improve voice services.
Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Google LLC, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. are not part of the initiative yet.
