AT&T Digital Life to Release Voice Assistant Mobile App
January 06, 2016
By Casey Houser
Contributing Writer
As self-proclaimed technology gurus, readers here may have a front seat to the connected home revolution. AT&T (News - Alert) is part of this charge and has made a name for itself with the Digital Life brand of home security and automation services.
Of course, Digital Life allows users to control their homes from a smartphone app, but the folks at AT&T are taking this capability one step further. AT&T has announced that it is testing the Voice Assistant mobile app that will give users the ability to ask questions about their personal networks. AT&T has called this development a step forward in providing users with more convenience as homeowners.
Kevin Petersen, the president of AT&T Digital Life, has more:
“Communicating with your Digital Life system using your voice and natural language is a convenient way to get even more out of your service than with the Digital Life app alone,” Petersen said. “As we add new devices and services to our managed platform, we’ll continue to introduce and extend features like the Voice Assistant to make Digital Life services even easier for customers to use.”
The app is expected to receive a full commercial launch within the first half of this year. At present, it is persisting through active trials to get it ready for primetime. It will land on both Android (News - Alert) and iOS and will contain a number of features such as the ability to recognize users’ spoken questions and control certain home devices.
AT&T notes that users can ask questions to the app such as, “Is the security system armed?” and, “Is the back door locked?” Users can then capitalize on responses to those answers by commanding the app with, for instance, the statement, “Set the system to ‘Armed Stay.’” The app will also speak commands back to users to let them know their systems have been armed or their doors are locked.
This type of interaction is made possible through the Curo speech and language platform that Interactions (News - Alert) has developed to provide users with a natural manner of communicating with devices. Interactions have an interesting history at AT&T having sold its AT&T Watson Speech Recognition program to Interactions Corporation back in 2014 while retaining an equity interest. Thus, given the growing importance of speech as a user interface it is not surprising that AT&T is looking to give voice to its Digital Life service.
Edited by Peter Bernstein
Article comments powered by
|