Leading consumer brands are looking to develop their own voice assistants to provide consistently on-brand, personalized and engaged automated customer experiences. Those with a visionary strategy and commitment to consumer privacy, like Sonos, are understanding the broader importance of AI-driven digital voice in helping expand their business and meet consumer needs and expectations, even as they quickly evolve.
The ReadSpeaker VoiceLab managed the development process, including carrying out recordings with Giancarlo Esposito, processing the recorded data, training Deep Neural Networking (DNN) models on that data, and managing quality control, delivery, and all necessary quality assurance steps. Because of the technicality of the voice recordings required to build the custom voice, which requires speech to be delivered in an extremely consistent way that prioritizes precise articulation and style, ReadSpeaker’s VoiceLab experts worked closely with Esposito throughout every stage of the process.
A key challenge in the development of this custom voice was the need for it to comprehend and pronounce non-standard text content that is often found in the music industry. It was also critical that the assistant was able to read artists’ track or album information in numerous languages. The VoiceLab team worked closely with Sonos and Esposito to optimize the speech output for this massively broad domain.
Sonos Voice Control is an entirely new voice experience that delivers fast, accurate hands-free control of music and a Sonos system with unmatched privacy. Designed with privacy at its core, Sonos Voice Control is the simplest way to control a Sonos system using only voice. Sonos Voice Control works on every voice-capable Sonos speaker, processing requests entirely on the device. No audio or transcript is sent to the cloud, stored, listened to or read by anyone. Available from June 1 in the US and later in 2022 in France on all voice capable Sonos products, Sonos Voice Control is compatible with Sonos Radio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora at launch. More services and markets will follow.
“We selected ReadSpeaker to power the custom voice for Sonos Voice Control for a variety of reasons, not least of which was their ability to work closely with us from the development phase all the way through delivery,” says Joseph Dureau, Vice President, Voice Experience, at Sonos. “ReadSpeaker’s approach to custom voice is innovative and extremely thorough – which is exactly what we required for this project – and the company’s dedicated linguistic team has been a critical tool for us throughout this project.”
“As brands become increasingly aware that, much like a visual logo, a custom voice ensures consistently engaging, on-brand interactions across touchpoints, our VoiceLab is developing voices that speak to their brand persona and create unique experiences,” says Roy Lindemann, CMO and CCO EMEA, at ReadSpeaker. “With more consumers leveraging digital voice every day for everything from making purchases to choosing which playlist to listen to, having a custom branded voice is becoming table stakes for delivering a quality, personalized CX in real time. By partnering with Sonos, we are helping to bring yet another brand’s voice to life in an exciting, innovative way.”
With over 20 years’ experience, ReadSpeaker’s AI-powered text-to-speech solutions and expert assistance enhance the accessibility of digital content and enable more user-friendly and engaging interactions with technology. The company’s flexible cloud and on-premise solutions bring over 110 expressive, humanlike synthetic voices in more than 35 languages to any application or device. The company consistently maintains its uncompromising commitment to data privacy and has so far speech enabled over 10,000 voice applications worldwide.
ReadSpeaker’s digital voice design brand, readspeaker.ai, helps agencies, integrators, and developers to enhance CX and drive sales through consistently engaging, on-brand interactions across touchpoints.
www.sonos.com
www.readspeaker.ai/solutions/custom-text-to-speech-tts-voices/
