Say “Hello” to a new app from Voiceitt that gives nonstandard speakers the ability to talk with others and control Alexa-based voice controlled smart devices. Designed for individuals, nursing facilities, institutions and organizations, the goal of the app is to empower individuals to better navigate environments and technology with their own dictionary of phrases and commands powered by state-of-the-art voice recognition software.
Despite the profusion of smart home devices and the popularity of voice command software, many who live with difficult to understand speech are cut off from these technological advancements, and so Voiceitt aims to help them better use this widely available technology.
“Everyone deserves to be able to express themselves and to be understood,” said Danny Weissberg, Voiceitt CEO and co-founder. “With this launch, countless people with non-standard speech will be able to use their own voice to easily communicate with caregivers, loved ones and even their smart home devices. I’m so proud to make our technology available to this wonderful community. Voice recognition technology is finally becoming accessible to everyone.”
Building Dictionaries and Confidence with Voiceitt
The app journey starts with a simple training phrase. From there, the software uses that baseline to better recognize an individual’s speech. By repeating some words and phrases several times, the app builds an AI-powered speech model the allows individuals to communicate specific commands.
In the backend, this works with a proprietary technology that combines machine learning with state-of-the-art speech analysis for any language. Combined, this allows the app to not only recognize atypical speech, but also speech patterns like utterances, cadence, breathing pauses and non-verbal sounds.
Users can even build a personalized dictionary of common phrases or commands and then train the app to recognize their unique pronunciations. After five minutes or so of training, the app can then recognize and translate them into typical speech, allowing users to better convey complex sentences and in turn navigate their lives a little more easily.
The technology comes at a crucial time for many following pandemic lockdowns where many with motor and speech impairments had been cut off from either their loved ones or specialized care facilities. With its introduction into the public sphere, Voiceitt hopes to be able to mitigate some of the hardships caused by the pandemic and improve the quality of life for as many as possible.
“The degree of independence our app helps give to members of our user community has inspired us to develop our technology even further and make it available to even more people. Our goal is to give voice to everyone,” Weissberg said.
