A common statement in the tech world is that in a few years “Voice-First” will be the highest priority in the area of machine control and content production. The success of Alexa, Siri and Co speaks for itself. According to studies, Amazon and Baidu currently hold a market share of 43% of the global smart speaker market in the second quarter of 2019, but the skills and applications that enable voice control are growing exponentially. Now the British Media Giant BBC also wants to enter this market.
Next year BBC is planning its own digital voice assistant, which will be integrated into the UK Broadcasting website, apps and Smart TV applications. “Beep”, as the wizard is called in the working title, will not have its own hardware, but will be compatible with all common loudspeakers.
The Voice Assistant, which listens to the activation word “Beep”, will not be able to cope with such complex tasks as the artificial intelligence of Alexa, Google or Siri makes it possible. Rather, it will be integrated into the BBC program and will process this content.
“Similar to BBC iPlayer, we want to make sure that everyone can benefit from this new technology and offer exciting new content, programs and services to people in a trustworthy and easy-to-use way.” – BBC
But one thing makes the little British assistant special. Everyone who has spoken with Alexa, Siri or Google knows the problems of the voice assistants with accents or inaccurate pronunciation. Beeb is currently being trained to understand the complex British accents. BBC is currently testing the assistant with voice data from its employees across the country. This makes the service accessible to a wider audience.
BBCs decision to set on its own solution can be the start of a new trend in the enterprise world. As already with the mobile roofridge movement there will be, so the expectations, ever more companies, which follow the trend and the users a mark-fair communication to offer want – beyond the market leaders Google, Baidu, Amazon and Apple.
