This Forbes article is about artificial intelligence, not voice – but I found it compelling. And a little bit scary. Anytime I read about how you can so easily manipulate the content in videos – the “deep fake” – it frightens me. Although I guess that should be the least of my worries these days. Here’s the ending from the piece:
These examples show that artificial intelligence, when used creatively, can do more than the grunt work. It is a way to build relationships with customers on a personal level while at the same time scaling at large in a cost-effective way. It’s important to go beyond equating AI to only chatbots and have conversations around how AI can actually work in service of brands and, in turn, be used to better their customer’s experience.
We should continue to have meaningful discussions around deepfakes and setting up safeguards and ethics around synthetic media. But, we must also move the conversation beyond just focusing on that element of synthetic media. It’s also time for brands and businesses to better understand the broader trends that are on the horizon, so they are prepared for the future of marketing to come.
Hat tip to the “Rain” agency for pointing me to this article that describes how employees heading back into the office can touch as few services as possible. Here’s the intro to that article:
Logitech Solutions for Zoom Rooms will integrate with Alexa for Business as a move to make meeting rooms contactless. Alexa for Business is a service that enables businesses to schedule meetings, reserve rooms and start video calls easily. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a need to reduce the need to touch conference room surfaces as employees head back to the office in hybrid remote work arrangements.
As noted in this announcement, Amazon has a new “Alexa Agency Curriculum,” that contains a bunch of resources for those interested in building skills – including voice strategy & design, development guidelines and launch considerations. Good news for anyone developing Alexa skills…
This C-Net article provides five “music hacks” to better leverage music when you use Alexa to listen to it. My favorite is this one:
When you’re listening to a new song you’ve never heard, it can be annoying to interrupt the song by asking Alexa what it’s called or who sings it. However, with a feature called Song ID, Alexa will announce the artist and name of the track before playing the song. To enable, say, “Alexa, turn on Song ID.”
The article also suggests a dozen fun music-related questions to ask Alexa, such as “Alexa, who is Jessie’s girl”…