Wizzard Software Announces The Release Of Its New  Interactive Voice Assistant Family Of Products

 

PITTSBURGH, PA, October 27, 1998

Businesses and consumers will be able to have productive conversations with their computers through a new verbal computing platform created by Wizzard Software.  The Interactive Voice Assistant (IVA) platform allows PC users to talk to their computers utilizing IBM's ViaVoice98 Speech recognition software.  IVA's will respond to commands and spoken dialog through Text-to-Speech (TTS) capabilities, Microsoft Agent Technology, and Wizzard Software's Natural Language Processing Engine.  

Using the IVA platform, Wizzard Software and other developers create assistants, which can plug into the core IVA platform.  An assistant for America Online allows users to do e-mail, chat and instant messaging by using their voice in addition to the keyboard.  Other consumer assistants released today include an Internet Assistant for stock quotes, horoscopes, sport scores, and a Dictation Assistant for dictating letters and documents.  

For the business user, Wizzard Software has created several office assistants which include, a Professional Dictation Assistant, a Presentation Assistant (which plugs into MS PowerPoint), a Form Processing Assistant, a Translation Assistant and an e-mail Assistant (which works with MS Outlook).  All are being released today.  Industry specific business assistants include a Chiropractic Assistant, an Insurance Assistant, and a Legal Assistant.  Users of multiple assistants can switch between them using single keywords. Each user can name their assistant whatever they wish.  Some examples of how a user would talk to an assistant are, "Freddy, get me a stock quote." "Ozzar, please pull up the Franklin file."  "I want to write a letter to Bill Johnson." "Lola, lets e-mail Donna in accounting.”

 “Bringing together IBM’s ViaVoice technology with the IVA platform creates an opportunity to make more people aware of the power of voice as a natural and productive way to use their PC,” said W.S. "Ozzie" Osborne, general manager, IBM Speech Systems.  “We look forward to working with Wizzard Software to bring speech-enabled applications to a variety of business audiences.”

“This is a big day for Wizzard Software,” says Chris Spencer, co-founder and CEO.  “Today we get to show the world what we have been working on for years and demonstrate how much easier a computer is to use with speech recognition.  These are not simple dictation products such as the ones that are currently on the market.  These are intelligent assistants which can hold conversations with you and increase your productivity up to 30%.”  Mr. Spencer points out that their assistants are not meant to replace the mouse or keyboard.  "Our assistants are created to increase productivity on the PC by adding speech recognition as an additional input method.  By combining the mouse, keyboard, and a users voice anyone can perform their daily computing tasks much more efficiently," says Spencer.

An SDK for developers will begin shipping November 1st, 1998 and is already being used by several major corporations for internal use, and to create assistants for resale.

Wizzard Software Corp. was founded in 1995, with a focus on providing speech recognition applications for consumers and businesses.  Their first product, VoicE-mail, was the world's first e-mail application using voice recognition.  The company completed a private placement in April of 1998 and plans to market 15-20 IVA Assistants over the next 3 quarters.

IBM Speech Recognition Leadership
IBM set the industry standard for speech recognition software when it launched the VoiceType family of products and expanded this standard in 1997 with the introduction of its ViaVoice family of products.  With more than 25 years of research in the field, the company has built a team of speech recognition specialists worldwide, dedicated to the development, support, marketing, and sale of IBM speech solutions in many languages.  For more information about IBM Speech Systems, visit the World Wide Web at http://www.ibm.com/viavoice.

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*IBM and ViaVoice are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation.