Amazon, BMW, Microsoft,
Baidu and other companies are joining together to ensure that voice-enabled products can work together.
The stated priorities of the “Voice Interoperability Initiative” include
releasing technologies and solutions that make it easier to integrate multiple voice services on a single product and accelerate machine learning and conversational artificial intelligence research to
improve the quality and interoperability of voice services.
Conspicuously absent from the initiative are Google, Apple and Samsung, all major players with their own voice assistants.
The Amazon-led initiative is built around the idea that voice services should work with each other seamlessly on a single device. It also intends to develop technologies for voice-enabled products
supporting multiple simultaneous wake words.
“Multiple simultaneous wake words provide the best option for customers,” stated Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Utterance by utterance, customers can choose which voice service will best support a particular interaction.”
Other companies
participating in the initiative include Bose, Cerence, ecobee, Harman, Logitech, Salesforce, Sonos, Sound United, Sony Audio
Group, Spotify, Tencent, Free, Orange, SFR, Verizon, Amlogic,
InnoMedia, Intel, MediaTek, NXP Semiconductors, Qualcomm, SGW Global, Tonly, CommScope, DiscVision, Libre, Linkplay, MyBox, Sagemcom,
StreamUnlimited and Sugr.
The alliance may be good for Amazon -- but for Google, Apple and Samsung, not so much.