Voice AI Year in Review 2022 - Voicebot Podcast Ep 289

This is the first of Voicebot's voice AI 2022 year-in-review
episodes, and today we focus on consumer solutions. There was no
lack of news this year, and industry insiders Peachy-Jean
Retizos, Tom Hewitson, and Eric Schwartz join me to break it all
down for our sixth annual year-in-review show.


Amazon's layoffs that impacted the Alexa and devices groups
dominated industry discussions late in the year. However, it was
just a few months earlier that a similar move by Google drove
industry news cycles. The two tech giants have set the tone for
voice AI in consumer solutions since 2014, so the pullbacks were
big news.


We lead off with these stories and how they are reshaping the
voice AI consumer sector. While the moves are generally viewed
negatively in the market, we also talk about the positive
elements and how they were not exactly unexpected. There is also
a discussion about what is getting additional focus in 2023 and
where the new paths of growth are emerging.


However, the tech giants are not the only game in town.
SoundHound became a public company in 2022 and became the first
large-scale voice AI pureplay to tap into public financial
markets since Nuance. Synthetic speech engines had a notable year
in terms of customer growth and acquisitions. And large language
models are taking natural language in an entirely new direction,
plus we hit on a few other topics.


It's been a pretty amazing year with highlights and lowlights,
and it was good to get some front-line experts in to hash it all
out. Enjoy!