BBC to launch digital voice assistant
The BBC is planning to launch a digital voice assistant next year, the corporation has announced. It will not be a hardware device in its own right but is being designed to work on all smart speakers, TVs and mobiles.
The plan is to activate it with the wake-word Beeb, although this is "a working title", a spokesman said. BBC staff around the UK are being invited to record their voices to help train the programme to recognise different accents.
[...] [The BBC] said that that having its own assistant would enable it to "experiment with new programmes, features and experiences without someone else's permission to build it in a certain way". "Much like we did with BBC iPlayer, we want to make sure everyone can benefit from this new technology, and bring people exciting new content, programmes and services - in a trusted, easy-to-use way," said a spokesman. "This marks another step in ensuring public service values can be protected in a voice-enabled future."
Do Brits understand Brits?
Also at TechCrunch, The Verge, 9to5Google, Engadget.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:53PM (3 children)
If the summary is accurate, Scotland and Wales are both already included under "Britain" and "the UK."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 29 2019, @12:42AM (2 children)
!. It's a funny. 2. Don't tell the Scots [wikipedia.org] that! [buzzfeed.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 29 2019, @03:23PM (1 child)
If you look on the right of that Wikipedia article, it has "Scottish English" as a subset of "British English", so yeah, it makes perfect sense.
And after watching a lot of Late Late Show w/ Craig Ferguson I guess I don't find a Scottish accent that weird anymore ;-)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday August 29 2019, @07:25PM
Craig Ferguson has what would be considered a mild accent, probably because he intended to be in media and broadcasting. I find it to be perfectly clear and not at all odd myself.
Also see item 1.