Tag Archives: #Voice

Announcing the 12 remarkable innovators selected for the upcoming Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI program

Posted by Jason Scott, Head of Startup Developer Ecosystem, USA & Saurabh Sharma, Head of Assistant Investments

Image from accelertor

In December 2020, we announced our inaugural Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI program, a 10-week digital accelerator designed to help North American voice technology startups to take their businesses to the next level. Today, we are proud to announce our cohort of 12 companies - collectively leveraging voice user interfaces to solve complex challenges across accessibility, education, and care:

Babbly, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Babbly provides parents real-time insights on their child’s speech and language skills and recommends personalized activities that promote their child's development.

Bespoken, Seattle, Washington, United States

Bespoken is the leader in automated testing, training, and monitoring for voice applications and devices. If you can talk to it, Bespoken can test it!

conversationHEALTH, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

conversationHEALTH enables conversational agents for patients and healthcare professionals in clinical trials, medical affairs, and commercial lines of business.

Nēdl, Santa Monica, California, United States

nēdl is democratizing access to the microphone by giving everyone their own live call-in radio station that transcribes, amplifies, and monetizes the audio creator's words as they speak.

OTO.AI, New York, New York, United States

OTO is building an acoustic engine capable of delivering non-semantic insights (intonation, emotions, laughter,etc.) from voice streams in real-time, on a small compute footprint.

Piffle, San Francisco, California, United States

Piffle is a voice gaming platform that aims to nurture professional wellness through conversational gameplay.

Powow AI, New York, New York, United States

Powow is a SaaS platform which unleashes the power of AI in business meetings. Powow uses proprietary AI algorithms to transcribe and analyze meetings, transforming them into actionable insights.

SiMBi, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

SiMBi combines learners' narrations with the text of a story to create an engaging audiovisual book that learners worldwide can read along to.

Talkatoo, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Talkatoo is a dictation software explicitly designed for veterinary and medical professionals, enabling them to save time in their practice.

Tinychef, New York, New York, United States

tinychef is a voice-first Culinary AI™ platform that helps consumers in their kitchen from their dinner dilemma, to grocery planning, grocery shopping, and cooking their meals with interactive experiences on smart speakers.

Voicify, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Voicify’s SaaS platform allows brands and large enterprises to easily design, build, and deploy voice apps, chatbots, and other conversational experiences across voice assistants, chatbots, and social media platforms.

Vowel, New York, New York, United States

Vowel brings the best of productivity and communication platforms into a single, integrated meeting tool.

The program kicks off on Monday, March 15th and will focus on product design, technical infrastructure, customer acquisition, and leadership development - granting our founders access to an expansive network of mentors, senior executives, and industry leaders,

We are incredibly excited to support this group of entrepreneurs over the next three months, connecting them with the best of our people, products, and programming to advance their companies and solutions.

We look forward to augmenting the work of these 12 innovators and to showcasing their accomplishments on Thursday, May 20th at 12:30pm EST at our Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI Demo Day.

A Google for Startups Accelerator for startups using voice technology to better the world

Posted by Jason Scott, Head of Startup Developer Ecosystem, U.S., Google

At Google, we have long understood that voice user interfaces can help millions of people accomplish their goals more effectively. Our journey in voice began in 2008 with Voice Search -- with notable milestones since, such as building our first deep neural network in 2012, our first sequence-to-sequence network in 2015, launching Google Assistant in 2016, and processing speech fully on device in 2019. These building blocks have enabled the unique voice experiences across Google products that our users rely on everyday.

Voice AI startups play a key role in helping build and deliver innovative voice-enabled experiences to users. And, Google is committed to helping tech startups deliver high impact solutions in the voice space. This month, we are excited to announce the Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI program, which will bring together the best of Google’s programs, products, people and technology with a joint mission to advance and support the most promising voice-enabled AI startups across North America.

As part of this Google for Startups Accelerator, selected startups will be paired with experts to help tackle the top technical challenges facing their startup. With an emphasis on product development and machine learning, founders will connect with voice technology and AI/ML experts from across Google to take their innovative solutions to the next level.

We are proud to launch our first ever Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI -- building upon Google’s longstanding efforts to advance the future of voice-based computing. The accelerator will kick off in March 2021, bringing together a cohort of 10 to 12 innovative voice technology startups. If this sounds like your startup, we'd love to hear from you. Applications are open until January 28, 2021.

Book a ride with the Google Assistant

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/xSY8wGoxTfoLSAfMjBj_VVRyMs6NxmC0QS1VfyKJQN40-74jlZZSV-7--tQvBApr7SQNsop9KgK117QI_yVgkbrdlztffu6c9YxUD5VVDQL1lbc5rAMf5GyUm61B3UIxDLNsFVUA Vishal Dutta Product Manager Geo
When my friends and I are getting ready to head out to dinner, there's always a moment when we stop to ask who is going to order our ride. Now, Google can take care of it. This week, we’re rolling out a new way to easily book ride services with your Google Assistant.


With your Android phone, iPhone, Google Home, or any smart speaker with the Assistant, start by saying, “Hey Google, book a ride to the Bluebird Cafe” or “Hey Google, get me a taxi to Indira Gandhi International Airport.” You will then be given a list of popular ride services to select from, including Uber, Ola, and many more, along with more information on estimated pricing and wait times from each service. If you only want ride options from a single provider, just include their name in your request, for example, “Hey Google, get me an Ola ride to Gateway of India.”


Then grab your phone and tap on your preferred ride service, and the app will open to let you confirm the booking. The feature will be available first in English and any country where one of our supported ride service partners operate. We plan to expand to more languages in the coming months.


If you’re in a hurry and your hands are all tied up, you’ll now be able to use the Assistant to see all your favorite ride services in one place and pick the one that works best for you.

Posted by Vishal Dutta, Product Manager

Start building apps for the Indian Google Assistant

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1h4wgmQMUKoeQGlNSAhXpnSUf6EuKvvX_l4mTRBkeaUvCBYjdhs_w5jyn1UkEBC1PyCeTppO86xfcFEm5RoEGtXiVysq8nWNM6RWsw1aTqEHYwkOFiJBCIs7YRDbuHbKNrDafj0D Brad Abrams Group Product Manager Google Assistant
Whether you’re searching for a great restaurant for biryani, mapping your travels or helping the kids with their homework, your Google Assistant is always ready to help. You can ask about your day or your commute, explore your favorite topics, and get answers to hundreds of small and big questions during your day. But to be truly successful, your Google Assistant should be able to connect you across the apps and services in your life. So starting today, developers and companies can build apps to engage with Indian users through Actions on Google, the developer platform for the Google Assistant. And as a user, you’ll soon be able to access more of your favorite services and content straight through your Google Assistant.
For anyone who wants to build for the Assistant, resources such as developer tools, documentation and a simulator are available on the Actions on Google developer website, making it easy to create, test and deploy apps. Eligible developers will also be invited to join the Google Assistant Developer Community Program to get support for their efforts.


Now that we’re launching the ability for everyone to create apps on the Google Assistant, Indians will soon have easy and fast access to all types of apps. Once an app works with the Assistant, you can just tell your Assistant to connect you with the app of your choice with a simple voice command – whether it’s on eligible Android phones or iPhones. And the best thing? You won’t need to install anything extra, we’ll connect you straight with the app you’d like to interact with. For example, just say “Ok Google, talk to….” to fire up an app.


Stay tuned as local Indian apps rollout soon, and dive in today by trying one of the many apps already available.  

We hope that this growing platform will give more Indians the help they need, at home or on-the-go – from the morning rush hour to the weekend unwind. Together with developers from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, we look forward to exploring and delivering these new possibilities for the Indian Google Assistant.


Posted by Brad Abrams, Group Product Manager, Google Assistant