Apple acquires AI startup, Voysis, an artificial intelligence startup that developed a platform for digital voice assistants to understand people’s natural language.
The acquisition of Voysis should give Siri the edge it needs to outperform the Google Assistant, which many in the industry say has a notable lead in natural language comprehension and processing.
Voysis is a Dublin based startup specialising in improving digital assistants for online shopping applications. Their software allows for digital assistants to respond more precisely to voice commands.
Voysis was founded in 2012 and sold its services to a range of companies over its years in operation, likely helping give Apple the confirmation it’s a company that can help them excel their natural language processing capabilities.
Voysis also had offices in Edinburgh and Boston while getting $8 million in venture funding from Polaris Partners in 2017.
Voysis uses an AI-based method called WaveNets to create more human-like computer speech making it easier to help users with queries. WaveNet technology was introduced by Google’s DeepMind programme in 2016.
Co-founder Peter Cahill said in 2018: “Voysis is a complete voice AI platform. What I mean by that is that the platform enables companies and businesses to rapidly stand up their own artificial intelligence that can be queried by voice or text.”
Cahill continued to explain that the company managed to reduce the solution footprint down to 25MB of memory, which makes it easier to run on smartphones without an internet connection and more effective integration with existing AI systems.
Apple has been aggressive in its acquisitions in this space in the bid to gain a higher market share. It was only in January that Apple acquired Seattle-based edge AI specialist Xnor.ai for approximately $200m. A report by CBInsights found that Apple acquired more AI firms (20) than any other leading tech company in 2019.
It will be interesting to see if Voysis is the answer to the natural language processing improvements Apple need in order to become market leaders and excel their Siri service offering.
