This week, we’re joined by the Mycroft AI team, and we’re getting deep into designing and developing on the open source alternative to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

If you’ve tried creating voice apps on platforms such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, then you’ll do doubt be familiar with their current limitations. Push notifications, monetisation and all-round flexibility generally leave plenty to be desired.

What if there was an alternative? A platform that really did let you create whatever you wanted. Something that'll let you monetise. Something completely open to being used in a way that you want to use it.

Well, that’s what the team at Mycroft AI have built.

What is Mycroft AI?

Mycroft AI is the world’s first open source voice assistant that runs anywhere. On desktop, mobile, smart speakers. In cars, fridges, and washing machines. You name it. You can put it where you like and do with it what you like as well.

One member of the Mycroft community has hooked the platform up to a webcam and created a facial recognition feature that uses a persons face instead of a wake word. When you look at the camera, the speaker wakes and is ready for you to speak to it!

As well as being open source and flexible, if you create something exceptional, then it could even become the default skill for that feature on the platform. That’s like you creating a really great weather skill on Alexa and Amazon using that as the default way to tell people the weather!

Plus, your personal data is kept totally private.

And Mycroft aren’t just creating cool software, they have a range of smart speakers as well. The Mark I speaker is on sale now and the Mark II is on Indiegogo right now.

Our Guests

Today, we’re joined by Joshua Montgomery, CEO; Steve Penrod, CTO; and Derick Schweppe, CDO to talk all things Mycroft AI.

We’re also joined again by co-host, Dustin Coates, and we’re getting into detail about:

• Where Mycroft AI came from and the company’s vision for voice and AI
• The differences between Mycroft and the other players such as Alexa and Google Assistant
• The value of an open source voice assistant
• About the platform (how it works, how you can get up and running)
• About the range of smart speakers
• Privacy and security
• The Mycroft community and what people are building
• Incentives and reasons to develop on Mycroft AI
• Dev Chops with Dustin: a new feature where Dustin gets into the dev details of the Mycroft platform
• Voice design techniques and processes
• The future of voice

Links

• Visit the Mycroft website
• Get Mycroft for developers
• Mycroft Mark II on Indigogo
• Buy Mycroft Mark 1
• Mycroft on Youtube
• Mycroft on Twitter
• Mycroft community forum
• Mycroft chat

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