Chinese tech giant Baidu and Irvine, California-based audio software company Conexant on Wednesday announced a new partnership meant to facilitate advancements in the artificial intelligence (AI) segment, specifically the one aimed at voice-enabled product and services, as well as their commercial implementations. The two companies are soon planning to release reference designs and software development kits (SDKs) for developers looking to program and manufacture Internet of Things (IoT) solutions with voice recognition capabilities, so long as they’re running on the Baidu-made DueroOS platform.
DuerOS is a voice-enabled AI solution compatible with a number of digital assistants that exist on smartphones, tablets, TVs, smart speakers, and a wide variety of other IoT devices. Conexant and Baidu’s partnership is meant to promote DuerOS, but also allow for advancements in the AI segment and related fields whose ultimate goals are related to commercialization. The platform itself was designed to allow for high-distance communications with an AI companion, having been developed and tweaked by experts looking to combat a number of related problems including echoes, background noise, and other acoustic issues. The SDKs that Baidu and Conexant are releasing were made for 2-mic and 4-mic hardware powered by DuerOS and are said to ennoble the overall user experience of any conversational voice interface that takes advantage of the newly released solution.
The two companies are hoping that their joint project will raise the bar for quality voice-enabled solutions by providing developers with a reliable way of determining where the user’s voice is coming from, thus being able to develop more efficient voice recognition systems. The partnership has many potentially beneficial applications, though it’s currently unclear how many third-party developers will opt to take advantage of the latest offerings from Baidu and Conexant. The IoT segment as a whole has mostly been gravitating toward smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo lineup and the Google Assistant, so the fact that this initiative is also looking to cater to that market segment isn’t particularly surprising. All of the aforementioned reference designs and SDKs will be available for download later today, the firms said. An update on their endeavors and AI industry as a whole is expected to follow soon.
