The News: Voiceitt, a provider of speech recognition technology for non-standard speech, today announced the release of Voiceitt 2 through its partner and authorized reseller, the assistive technology company, RAZ Mobility. Voiceitt 2 is an application that allows people with speech disabilities, including those experiencing dysarthria, to speak spontaneously and be understood by others. Once trained on a user’s specific speech characteristics, the app will translate the user’s non-standard speech into standard speech, and will also enable users to transcribe conversations, dictate notes, and seamlessly integrate with popular AI assistants such as ChatGPT.
See the Press Release containing additional details on the application here.
Voiceitt Launches Accessible and Inclusive Voice-Enabled Experience App
Analyst Take: Voiceitt announced the release of the newest version of its speech recognition app, Voiceitt 2, which is designed to let people with dysarthric speech communicate seamlessly with others, in real time. Dysarthric speech, which is marked by “slurred,” “choppy,” or “mumbled” speech, can occur due to damage to the nervous system which causes the muscles that produce speech to become paralyzed or weakened. Stroke victims, those with neuromuscular afflictions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), people with cerebral palsy, or those with other brain injuries often experience dysarthria, and find it difficult to communicate with others quickly and efficiently.
According to the company, the app will be available via RAZ Mobility as English-language, browser-based software for bulk license purchase to organizations and to individuals in North America. Pricing is set at $499.99 per user, per year, with a 30-day free trial, and monthly subscriptions are available at a cost of $49.99 per month, also with a 30-day free trial. The software is anticipated to be available in the UK and Australia in 2024, with versions supporting additional languages and geographies expected to follow.
Leveraging a Corpus of Dysarthric Speech Data to Improve Recognition and Accuracy
Voiceitt’s approach uses machine learning (ML) and speech recognition to power its proprietary automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. Users need to record a series of phrases to train the system and onboard the user. This lets Voiceitt create a profile of the user’s voice, which lets the system infer the characteristics of their voice, and then properly translate their dysarthric speech into standard speech.
In addition to the data captured from the user during onboarding, Voiceitt also captures and incorporates data from many different users with voice impairments, including those with cerebral palsy, stroke survivors, and others with different types of impairments, and gather them together to create a multi-user, speaker-independent model, according to Voiceitt’s VP of Innovation Matt Gibson. As such, the model is the starting point for adapting and fine tuning toward individual speaker data, which is used to fine-tune the model to a person’s individual characteristics. As more speaker data is captured and incorporated into the model, the model becomes stronger and stronger, Gibson says.
Fast Pace of Technological Achievement
Alyson Pace, Voiceitt’s Co-CEO, noting that a key goal of the company was to create a solution that could be used very quickly, with minimal training or onboarding tasks. When Pace started with the company 4 months ago, the model required 1,000 utterances to provide enough training data to ensure the app would work effectively for most users. Since then, Pace said that the number of required training phrases has already been reduced to about 400, reflecting the rapid pace of technology achievement, and the team is working on further reducing the number of required utterances.
Pace says that Voiceitt’s goal is to become the primary provider for translating dysarthric and non-standard speech to regular speech. Voiceitt’s initial market focus includes the healthcare, rehabilitation, and education markets, which feature many underserved potential users. Voiceitt is also considering go-to-market opportunities across the automotive market, telehealth, connected home, and contact centers, which, to date, have not deployed efficient solutions designed to help those who use dysarthric or non-standard speech to communicate effectively with the products or services in these markets.
Additional Opportunities in the Enterprise
Another key area that should be on the horizon is in enterprise collaboration and communication. Most recently, Voiceitt announced in July 2023 a partnership with Webex by Cisco that allows people with speech impairments to speak and be understood during virtual meetings, utilizing its captioning and transcription technology within Webex Meetings.
Though originally trained to handle dysarthric speech, the technology can also be leveraged to help create more accurate transcriptions from speakers with accents or other regional or cultural dialects, which can facilitate better communication and understanding among teams and colleagues around the world. According to Pace, Voiceitt is also working on integrations for Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and currently has a ChatGPT integration allowing users to directly interact with generative AI technology.
Eventually, Voiceitt may be useful in the contact center space, expanding the range of customers with whom organizations can engage via voice or text-based channels. Early movers in this space likely will gain a competitive advantage by not only claiming they are inclusive, but deploying technology to ensure that all who wish to engage with a company can do so easily.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
What Voice Assistants Trained to Understand Atypical Speech Mean to The Future of Work
Webex Contact Center Incorporates Generative AI Conversation Summaries
Despite a Rise in AI in CX, People Still Prefer to Interact with Humans
Author Information
Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
