Voice assistants are increasingly becoming popular and Roku has now confirmed that it’s throwing its hat in the ring as well. The company today confirmed that it’s going to develop and launch its own voice assistant by the fall of 2018. It’s going to release the voice assistant as a free update for all existing Roku TVs and streaming devices. The company also announced the expansion of its licensing program to cover soundbars and smart speakers.
Roku has announced that it’s going to launch reference designs for soundbars and smart speakers. This will help third-party manufacturers develop products that can connect to Roku TVs directly and have the ability to control Roku TV apps through voice commands.
There is a voice control option available to users with a Roku remote or the mobile app. They can use this feature to pull up content on a TV screen when it’s turned on. However, the voice assistant will do that with natural language processing and even let users pull up Roku content on different devices even if the TV is turned off initially.
Roku has also said that TCL is going to be the first company to launch a new device as part of its new entertainment licensing program but it hasn’t provided any details about what this device is going to be and when it’s going to arrive.
Expect Roku to reveal more information about these upcoming products at the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 in Las Vegas next week.