SoundHound AI recently announced its partnership with Perplexity, the conversational AI-powered answer engine. Together, they aim to integrate Perplexity’s online LLM capabilities into SoundHound Chat AI – a voice assistant that utilises numerous real-time domains and generative AI responses. This collaboration strengthens SoundHound’s AI product.
The SoundHound Chat AI assistant will utilise Perplexity to provide precise, current responses to web-based inquiries that static LLMs presently cannot address, broadening the scope and complexity of questions the assistant can manage.
For example, a user might ask, “How does this week’s gas price compare to last week’s?” The response will combine accurate, live data on gas prices with a comprehensive generative AI-style explanation, offering additional context. Subsequently, the user could request, “Navigate to the nearest gas station,” leveraging SoundHound’s technology to seamlessly incorporate data from relevant sources and integrate with navigation software on devices such as cars or phones.
SoundHound’s voice AI products are backed up by almost two decades of expertise in AI, speech recognition, and natural language processing. The company’s proprietary technology enables industry-leading speed and accuracy, allowing users to interact naturally to access a wide array of real-time knowledge domains (e.g., flight schedules, sports scores, music selections, and restaurant searches), generative AI responses (from multiple LLMs), and now, Perplexity’s web search results.
According to the company, SoundHound Chat AI was the first voice assistant in the world to introduce generative AI capabilities and the first to be deployed for automotive use. It is currently operational in over 12 countries, supporting 18 languages through its partnership with automotive company Stellantis.
The assistant employs specially developed arbitration technology, blending software engineering and machine learning to intelligently select the most appropriate response, thereby minimising harmful “AI hallucinations.”
“Through this integration with SoundHound’s Chat AI assistant, we’re one step closer to our goal of making Perplexity available to everyone across every device they use,” said Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer at Perplexity AI. “With the growing popularity of voice AI, we’re allowing users to more easily access the information they need, when they need it.”
“By integrating Perplexity search capabilities into SoundHound Chat AI we’re raising the bar for voice assistants and the kinds of queries they can handle effortlessly,” added Mike Zagorsek, Chief Operations Officer at SoundHound AI. “Where this technology is already deployed in vehicles, we’re seeing usage habits shift substantially – increasing by multiples. We’re confident that this enhancement will further delight users as more and more people choose to talk rather than type.”
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