语音作为下一个重要界面的理论正获得强劲势头，投资者正向从事从模型制造商到企业客户服务提供商，从会议记录工具到AI驱动的口述服务的语音AI初创企业注入数十亿美元。
ory of voice being the next big interface has picked up strong momentum, with investors pouring billions of dollars into voice AI startups working on areas ranging from model makers to enterprise customer service providers, and from meeting note-takers to AI-powered dictation.
每周都会有新模型或工具发布，声称能够听起来像人类并像人类一样进行对话。然而，实际上情况可能并非如此。企业语音AI平台PolyAI的首席技术官Shawn Wen认为，尽管全双工模型（能够在倾听您的同时进行说话）已经发布，但语音AI尚未迎来其“ChatGPT时刻”。
Every week there is a new model or a tool release that claims to sound human and converse like one. However, in reality, that might not be the case. Enterprise voice AI platform PolyAI’s CTO Shawn Wen thinks that despite the release of full-duplex models — which can speak while listening to you — voice AI doesn’t have its “ChatGPT moment” yet.
“我们已经达到了开发全双工模型的里程碑。下一个挑战是让推理速度变得非常快，以便模型能够快速获取答案，使对话感觉自然，”他在上个月的HumanX大会舞台上告诉我。
“We have reached the milestone of developing full-duplex models. The next challenge is to make reasoning very fast, so that the models can fetch answers quickly and the conversation feels natural,” he told me on stage at the HumanX conference last month.
他还表示，客户服务中的AI代理不应听起来机械化，而应让来电者有足够的信心相信它们能够解决问题。
He also said that AI agents in customer service should not sound robotic and should give callers enough confidence that they can solve problems.
“我认为下一个阶段会略有不同，因为一旦语音足够好，客户愿意与它们进行前两三轮互动时，他们就会开始建立信心，随着时间的推移，如果代理能够解决我的问题，他们会觉得可能不需要再和人类交谈，”他说。
“I think the next stage will be slightly different because once the voice is good enough, like, and the customer is willing to engage with them for the first two or three turns, they start to build confidence, and over time, they will feel like I probably don’t have to talk to a human if the agent can solve my problem,” he said.
会议记录工具Otter的首席营销官Alex Gay认为，说话人识别、意图捕捉以及结合组织知识进行转录是实现自动化的关键步骤。该公司也在研发可能代表人们参与会议的数字孪生体。对于这项技术，他表示，输出语音传达与在会议中与人类交谈时相同的情感表达至关重要。
Alex Gay, CMO for meeting notetaker Otter, opined that speaker identification, intent capture, and typing that up with organizational knowledge is a key step for enabling automation. The company is also working on digital twins that might represent people in meetings. For that technology, he said it’s paramount that the output voice gives the same emotive expressions of talking to a human in a meeting.
如果你想想你现在正在参加的会议，你所拥有的最佳对话往往发生在你能够进行辩论、进行战略讨论，并且感觉到这种对话背后有某种关系支撑的时候。如果你无法与一个虚拟形象实现这一点，那么它就只是一个问答聊天机器人，”盖伊指出。
“If you think about the meetings that you’re in right now, the best conversations that you have are where you can have debate, and strategic discussions, and when you feel like there’s a relationship that underpins it. If you aren’t able to have that with an avatar, then it’s just a q and a chatbot,” Gay noted.
语音AI的理解与透明度 虽然语音AI模型已经有所改进，但AI助手往往无法理解用户，或者你的会议记录工具显示了错误的转录文本或摘要。
Voice AI’s understanding and transparency While voice AI models have improved, AI assistants often don’t understand users, or your meeting notetaker shows the wrong transcript or a summary.
温认为，自动语音识别（ASR）模型经常遗漏重要关键词，这导致在捕捉完整上下文时出现问题。
Wen thinks that ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) models often miss important keywords, and that creates an issue in capturing the whole context.
Otter的盖伊也同意这一观点，并补充说，公司一直在努力改进转录技术。他还表示，语言是语音模型需要改进的一个领域。
Otter’s Gay agreed with this, adding that the company keeps working on improving transcription. He also said that language is one area where voice models need to improve.
“对于Otter来说，你知道，转录从来不是终点。它只是我们能够在此基础上推动一些生产力提升的层面。但如果你的原始转录没有达到你所需的准确度，那么所有后续行动都会变得有误。而一旦开始基于这些错误信息采取行动，那就是错误的。你会对平台失去信任。因此，持续改进我们的ASR模型对我们来说至关重要，因为所有的下游影响都是重大的，”他说。
“For Otter, you know, transcription was never the end point. It was just the layer that we could start to drive some of the productivity gains on the back of. But if your original transcription didn’t have the accuracy that you needed, all the follow-up actions that you have become flawed. And the minute that starts to take action, that is wrong. You lose trust in the platform. It is critical for us to continue to improve that ASR model because all of the downstream impacts are significant,” he said.
随着新语音工具的出现，透明度问题也随之浮现。工具应该向客户声明他们正在被录音或正在与AI交谈。Otter表示，它希望在会议中的人们建立信任，即使在机器人不在场的会议中，它也希望尝试诸如在聊天中通知所有人会议正在被录音之类的方法。PolyAI的温也表示，在企业通话中明确告知人们他们正在与AI交谈是很重要的。
With the new voice tools, there is also a question of transparency. Tools should declare to customers that they are being recorded or talking to AI. Otter said that it wants to instill trust in people who are in a meeting, so even for a meeting where the bot is not present, it wants to try methods like notifying everyone in the chat that the meeting is being recorded. PolyAI’s Wen also said that it’s important to establish that people are talking to an AI in enterprise calls.