BBC develops its own voice AI

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BBC will use its own voice assistant on BBC platforms, including its website and BBC iPlayer, and make it available for third-party manufacturers.

Its working name is Beeb, the nickname often used affectionately for the company. ‘Beeb‘ may also become the voice command to activate the system.

• BBC NEWS says a final decision on the wake word is still pending.
• THE GUARDIAN says Beeb will be ready ‘in the new year’ after further testing with BBC staff across the UK.
• A BBC spokesperson said their initiative is so ‘everyone can benefit from this new technology’ and the BBC is ‘ensuring public service values can be protected in a voice-enabled future.’
• Unlike other voice assistants, Beeb will not be offered as a device, aka ‘smart speaker.’
• The British public broadcaster says compared with Alexa, Siri, and others, theirs will better understand British accents.

“With an assistant of its own, the BBC will have the freedom to experiment with new programmes, features and experiences without someone else’s permission to build it in a certain way.”

BBC statement

CONTEXT

American-developed systems such as Alexa and Google Home have been found to be less efficient with accents outside the US, according to a 2018 study by The Washington Post. The UK presents a famously wide range of accents and dialects — with at least 37 dialects of English in one estimate.

More than 50% of current shipments by Amazon and Google are to markets outside the US, says CANALYS, a market research company. Amazon is the dominant company with 25% of the global market. Smart speakers use natural language processing algorithms on AI systems that can discern spoken language, convert it to text, match results to requests, and convert the result back into a ‘spoken’ response. The Guardian says Beeb was developed by an in-house team at BBC.

OUR TAKE

• Cultural integrity is a natural space for public broadcasters. Dialects and accents are key elements of culture, as are forms of storytelling.
• Brand integrity becomes more important as voice grows in use. ‘Without someone else’s permission’ points to the prerogative for content creation felt by broadcasters and publishers in contrast to the techcos.
• Critics will say this a wasteful expense in the face of private alternatives that are already established and have massive sums to compete. The final arbiter will be public adoption.
• BBC is obviously pushing ahead with in-house AI capability in natural language processing and other machine learning models.

SEE RELATED STORIES

• BBC to launch digital voice assistant BBC NEWS | August 27, 2019
• The BBC is developing a voice assistant, code named ‘Beeb’ TECH CRUNCH | August 27, 2019 | by Natasha Lomas
• BBC to launch Alexa rival that will grasp regional accents THE GUARDIAN | August 26, 2019 | by Jim Waterson
• BBC to launch ‘Beeb,’ its own voice assistant SiliconANGLE | August 26, 2019 | by James Farrell
• Baidu overtakes Google in global smart speaker market THE VERGE | August 26, 2019 | by Sam Byford
• Canalys: Baidu replaces Google to become number two in smart speaker market in Q2 2019 CANALYS | August 26, 2019
• THE ACCENT GAP THE WASHINGTON POST | July 19, 2018 | by Drew Harwell
• BBC Micro WIKIPEDIA
• Regional voices: English across the UK BRITISH ACCENTS AND DIALECTS | The British Library
• British Accents and Dialects: A Rough Guide EF ENGLISH LIVE