SoundHound Enhances Voice Assistant With Perplexity’s Search Tech

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SoundHound has signed a partnership with conversational AI-powered search engine Perplexity to deliver next-gen voice capabilities for IoT devices. The collaboration aims to enhance SoundHound’s voice assistant, SoundHound Chat AI, with advanced online large language model (LLM) capabilities that Perplexity specialises in.

SoundHound Chat AI will be equipped to provide not only more accurate and up-to-date responses to web-based inquiries, but also more complex answers that go beyond the capabilities of current static LLMs. This expands the assistant’s functionality dramatically, enabling it to tackle a variety of real-time questions with precise information and contextual explanations.

Mike Zagorsek, Chief Operations Officer at SoundHound AI, said: “By integrating Perplexity search capabilities into SoundHound Chat AI, we’re raising the bar for voice assistants and the kinds of queries they can handle effortlessly.

“Where this technology is already deployed in vehicles, we’re seeing usage habits shift substantially – increasing by multiples. We’re confident that this enhancement will further delight users as more and more people choose to talk rather than type.”

One practical example of the enhanced capabilities can be seen when a user inquires about current gas prices compared to the previous week.

The assistant, leveraging Perplexity’s technology, can now deliver live updates combined with an in-depth generative AI explanation. Subsequent commands like asking for directions to the nearest gas station are processed seamlessly as the assistant integrates data correctly and efficiently with a user’s navigation system, be it in a vehicle or another smart device.

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Operating on nearly two decades of expertise in AI, speech recognition, and natural language understanding, SoundHound’s voice AI products allow users to engage in natural and effortless dialogues with the assistant. Users can access a broad spectrum of information across various domains such as flight details, sports scores, music, and restaurants, now enriched with Perplexity’s refined web search results.

The integration is not just a technical upgrade but a strategic enhancement to the first voice assistant launched with generative AI capabilities and the pioneer to be implemented in the automotive industry via a partnership with Stellantis. Presently, SoundHound Chat AI operates in over 12 countries and 18 languages, illustrating its global reach and versatility.

Additionally, the assistant incorporates unique arbitration technology designed to intelligently discern the most appropriate responses, significantly reducing instances of “AI hallucinations,” a common challenge in AI interactions where the system delivers irrelevant or fabricated answers.

Dmitry Shevelenko, Chief Business Officer at Perplexity, commented: “Through this integration with SoundHound’s Chat AI assistant, we’re one step closer to our goal of making Perplexity available to everyone across every device they use.

“With the growing popularity of voice AI, we’re allowing users to more easily access the information they need, when they need it.”

Perplexity’s announcement comes as reports suggest that OpenAI is gearing up to launch an AI-driven challenger to Google Search next week.