Linux Foundation's New 'OVN Network' Pushes Open Standards for AI-Powered Voice Apps

"Organizations are beginning to develop, design, and manage their own AI-powered voice assistant systems independent of platforms such as Siri and Alexa," reports VentureBeat: The transition is being driven by the desire to manage the entirety of the user experience and integrate voice assistance into multiple business processes and brand environments, from call centers to stores. In a recent survey of 500 IT and business decision-makers in the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K., 28% of respondents said they were using voice technologies and 84% expect to be using them in the next year.

To support the evolution, the Linux Foundation launched the Open Voice Network (OVN), an alliance advocating for the adoption of open standards across voice assistant apps in automobiles, smartphones, smart home devices, and more. With founding members Target, Schwarz Gruppe, Wegmans Food Markets, Microsoft, Veritone, Deutsche Telekom, and others, the OVN's goal — much like Amazon's Voice Interoperability Initiative — is to standardize the development and use of voice assistant systems and conversational agents that use technologies including automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, advanced dialog management, and machine learning... It was first announced as the Open Voice Initiative in 2019, but expanded significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enterprises to embrace digital transformation.

"Voice is expected to be a primary interface to the digital world, connecting users to billions of sites, smart environments and AI bots ... Key to enabling enterprise adoption of these capabilities and consumer comfort and familiarity is the implementation of open standards," Mike Dolan, SVP and general manager of projects at the Linux Foundation, said in a statement. "The potential impact of voice on industries including commerce, transportation, healthcare, and entertainment is staggering and we're excited to bring it under the open governance model of the Linux foundation to grow the community and pave a way forward."
Besides a focus on standards and technology-sharing, the group plans to collaborate with existing industry associations on regulatory/legislative issues — including data privacy."

Kiss another one goodbye...

[jenningsthecat]

By "another one", I mean the low-paying jobs that are the difference between somewhat-reasonable wage slavery and abject poverty.

I also predict that in the not-too-distant future we'll long for the days of nearly-impenetrable accents coming from offshore support centres. The content of artificial speech driven by so-called "AI" will be easy to understand, but I suspect that making that AI understand us will be a very different story. On the plus side, a whole lot more people are poised to acquire an understanding of both how shitty a replacement AI is for human beings, and what a scam that thing that has been dubbed "AI" really is.

it's time to lower medicare age so that people can

[Joe_Dragon]

it's time to lower medicare age so that people older people can quit jobs.

Re:

[Kraeten]

I don't think this will ever replace call centers completely. No matter how good this gets, it will always be a glorified phone tree. Unusual billing questions, account changes, account unlocks, new sales, all will need a human to verify the identity of another human until some kind of AI protection law comes up to keep companies from being sued for mistakes in their AI. I have yet to have any of my questions properly answered whenever I use those text based bots, for instance. Over the 20 or so times I've

Obligatory xkcd...

[aitikin]

https://xkcd.com/927/

Re:

[Errol backfiring]

Well, sort of, but in this case the new standard might not have a double agenda.

Re:

[aitikin]

Well, sort of, but in this case the new standard might not have a double agenda.

You trust Microsoft that much?

Tech behind it?

[IMightB]

So after browsing the linked site for 60 sec, it seems like it's all marketing speak. There's no mention of the tech behind it. It appears to just be a Yet Another Standards Body.

The Microsoft Linux Foundation :]

[takionya]

IMightB [slashdot.org]: "So after browsing the linked site for 60 sec, it seems like it's all marketing speak. There's no mention of the tech behind it. It appears to just be a Yet Another Standards Body."

This might be a more accurate title:

“Linux Foundation partners with Microsoft and Target to create standards for voice technology [zdnet.com]”