Smart wearables like the Apple Watch and FitBit have become mainstays of those seeking to track their fitness, but now, voice-enabled smart speakers and displays are looking to gain a foothold in the health sector. Voice tech has already been used to analyze audio for COVID and detect emotional sentiment, paving the way for smart devices to try their hand at more sophisticated use cases tied to biometrics. One new area being pioneered is sleep data. Amazon is developing an Alexa device that uses radar to look for signs of sleep apnea and, last week, Google’s new Nest Hub display announced similar radar functionality that evaluates sleeping patterns. Assistant-equipped devices in the home are clearly getting smarter, but privacy concerns still remain. However, if the value-added to daily life continues increasing, we expect more consumers to get comfortable exchanging data for experience quality.

In just a few years, voice has transcended the smart speaker to occupy or control a wide swath of the smart home: displays, thermostats, doorbells, and more. Alexa and Google Assistant devices can already direct the kitchen and laundry appliances of companies like LG, Whirlpool, and GE. Samsung’s smart fridge is even branded the “Family Hub” to streamline the whole family’s tasks. This week, it was reported that Amazon is developing a larger Echo Show device that can be mounted on a wall. With this new product, the company is looking to establish Alexa as the ever-more-visible brain that connects the smart home suite, paving the way for more immersive and connected voice experiences.

Voice is a natural channel for conveying our emotions and feelings. However, voice technology is still trying to crack analyzing sentiment and how these data points can inform the creation of emotionally intelligent voice experiences and assistants. We have seen voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant expand their speaking styles to include different emotions in certain responses, reflecting more humanlike interactions. However, monitoring emotions on the consumer side is still a nascent technology. Amazon has made some steps toward realizing this with its health and wellness wearable Halo, which tracks users’ tone through their voices to make them more aware of their communication styles. This week, we’ve seen a new update in emotion recognition with Spotify’s patent approval of technology that analyzes listeners’ moods. Even though the patent only points to a small amount of features and a targeted use case, we are beginning to see how voice technology might leverage sentiment to provide more relevant recommendations and experiences for consumers in many contexts.

The car has increasingly become an area of focus for voice development. This isn’t surprising given that hands-free voice control is a natural fit for busy drivers and usage is already higher than on smart speakers. As a result, many voice-focused companies have targeted this space and are creating advanced custom voice assistant offerings. Recently, Amazon unveiled the Alexa Custom Assistant offering to build car assistants with both a brand assistant and Alexa. This past week, we learned of Cerence’s new Drive 2.0 platform providing customers personalized features and software specific to the car experience. With many businesses now building solutions specifically for the car, we’re starting to see advanced use cases emerge including commerce, geo-location, and more complex tasks. There’s open road ahead for the auto industry, and voice is accelerating.

Although the voice ecosystem has long been dominated by the likes of Amazon, Google, and Apple, many brands are exploring the arena of custom owned assistants that give brands more control over data and user experience without a third-party intermediary. With Amazon’s latest announcement, the line is blurring between big tech voice assistants and brand-owned custom assistants. A handful of companies have already created devices that allow for the coexistence of their own assistant alongside a mainstream assistant. European telecommunications companies including Vodafone Spain, Orange, and Deutsche Telekom have all taken this approach and released devices integrated with both their custom assistant and Alexa. By using Amazon’s Alexa Custom Assistant initiative, many more companies will be thinking about how they can leverage the best of both worlds, bringing a generalist assistant alongside a specialist.

In many ways conversational interfaces and AI was introduced via chatbots. As consumers have become more comfortable with the technology, we’ve seen companies such as Amtrak, Whole Foods, Bank of America, and more invest significantly in adding chatbots to their websites, mobile apps and social media presences. With voice emerging as a new and intuitive way for people to engage with technology, we now see conversational experiences offering the ability to either type or speak your commands, providing a multimodal experience that seamlessly combines both display and audio. Providing this choice of modality for input becomes important as assistant technology is now moving into more public spaces, imploring companies to enable more natural options for users to communicate in noisy or crowded environments. Amazon’s latest public test of chat-based Alexa access is another sign of where assistants may be heading next.

To-date the voice assistant landscape has primarily been driven by smart speakers and mobile assistants, but new devices are quickly taking hold. Brands have always sought to connect with customers on-the-go, and assistant technologies are now enabling a new way to provide value in their everyday lives. Smart hearables and wearables, including earbuds, watches and even glasses have all been embedded with Alexa and Google Assistant so that customers can easily ask for information and perform tasks anytime, anywhere. The most recent example of this is Amazon’s new Echo Buds feature focused on collecting fitness data (more below). However, this trend has been maturing for some time now. Recently, Fitbit added Google Assistant to its Sense and Versa watches that are already integrated with Alexa, providing a choice in assistant for users. For hearables, Foursquare’s new Marsbot for AirPods assistant serves as a personal audio guide as people stroll through a public space, and Amazon has piloted a wayfinding feature for Echo Buds to provide product and location information within a Whole Foods store. As these ‘headless’ devices free us from the ties of a cord or our home devices, on-the-go voice experiences are innovating brand marketing.

Digital conversations with friends and colleagues have traditionally revolved around text - typing on our keyboards or phones to communicate messages. Although the pandemic has created new demand for video conferencing, screen fatigue has started setting in, leaving space for a new kind of communication platform driven by voice. Several companies have started to populate this new audio ecosystem, trying to leverage voice conversations for personal and professional use. From Discord to Clubhouse, these kinds of voice-driven platforms are becoming more common, and now we’re seeing mainstream platforms like Twitter recognizing value here as well (more below). As many of us continue to work remotely, audio chat is emerging as a unique way to maintain human connection and rapport.

As a nascent space, voice technology’s full potential has not yet been realized. But in the last few years, assistants have made large strides in the quest to be smarter, seamlessly providing user experiences that quickly answer increasingly complex queries with comprehensive responses. For example, Alexa Conversations—released in July— enables the devices to understand more nuanced requests. With new Amazon and Google features, users can utter commands to perform tasks within mobile apps. Devices across the spectrum are integrating voice tech, forming a connected ecosystem that shares information. Not only do these software improvements push toward a future that centers on ambient computing, they are opening up new opportunities for brands to make their mark before others as the field continues to advance.

Today marks the 100th edition of this newsletter, and we’re so grateful to all our readers for staying with us each week as we’ve analyzed the rapid maturation of voice AI.