Contxto – Last Friday, Redwood Ventures announced its participation in an investment round for an undisclosed amount in a press release. Mexican artificial intelligence (AI) startup, Atexto was the beneficiary of these funds. And alongside the Tapatío venture capital (VC) firm were Avalancha Ventures, Dux Capital, MC Capital, Innogen Capital, Poligono Capital, as well as various angel investors.
Training voice bots to understand conversations is what Atexto does best. The startup currently garners training services in English, Spanish, and French and in can recognize multiple accents too. However, in the near future, Atexto hopes to cover more languages.
Artificial intelligence needs training too
Isn’t it eerie how assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa have an almost human-appeal to them? Well getting to that degree of credibility isn’t just a matter of programming.
Anything that uses artificial intelligence requires consistent exposure to conversational patterns to truly provide an interactive, human-like experience. But businesses that use these bots don’t necessarily have the time to educate an algorithm. It’s at that point they can refer to Atexto.
Brenda Mana and Esteban Gorupicz founded Atexto in 2016. The startup gathers audio, then through paid crowdsourcing has independent hires transcribe the audio to text. Then, the algorithm sucks up all that information to identify conversational patterns and apply them to a business’ voice assistants and chatbots.
According to Atexto’s website, it can train bots in other languages as well including Italian, German, Galician, Catalan, and Chinese.
Related article: VOIQ lands US$2 million from Silicon Valley investors for voice AI solution
Voice bots will continue to spread
Giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon have set a milestone in consumer experiences with artificial intelligence. And no doubt this has seeped into the business to business (B2B) context.
Perhaps the first to hail the arrival of voice bots are sales, marketing, and service call providers that are interested in offering a human layer to the attention they provide. But going a step further, it can apply in other industries as well, such as hospitality.
For example, when residing in a hotel, a voice-activated AI assistant can help you arrange room service, provide recommendations for entertainment, or simply inform you how the weather will be like the next day; that way you know if you can pull out your swim gear.
In a way, voice bots are a fantastic way to pull people away from phone screens and be a little more present—even if technically, you’re talking to an algorithm.
But who doesn’t love to hear what they have to say?
-ML
