When it comes to AI-based voice assistants, SoundHound actually arrived before Amazon’s Alexa with their Hound platform, which based on initial testing appears to be more than capable of holding its own. However it did not quite take off the same way as Alexa did, but SoundHound is not giving up.
In a report from Bloomberg, it has been revealed that SoundHound has managed to raise $75 million in funding in which they plan on competing against the likes of Amazon and Google when it comes to AI. One of those ways is by integrating their platform, Houndify, into other devices, but they are going about it in a different way.
According to SoundHound Chief Executive Officer Keyvan Mohajer, “We don’t have an agenda to hijack your product. If you use Amazon, you lose your brand, your users. You have to ask your user to log into their Amazon account, they have to call on Alexa, and all the data belongs to them.” Basically the idea here is that manufacturers/developers can use SoundHound’s technology, but none of the information collected will be going back to SoundHound themselves, unlike Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant.
It sounds interesting and for those worried about huge tech firms collecting data on its users, perhaps SoundHound’s approach could be looked upon more favorably.