It's Aloha Nina and sayonara Siri. Get ready to bid adieu to the much-loved virtual assistant Siri as its biggest threat Nina is on the prowl. After powering Apple's Siri and releasing several useful apps, Nuance Communications is all set to take the app world by storm with its virtual assistant "Nina".
Nuance Communications' announced its "virtual assistant for mobile customer service apps", given the moniker Nina, on Monday Aug. 6. The Siri-like feature is now being offered as a software development kit (SDK) for both Android and iOS developers.
Nina is being touted as the first voice recognition app that lays equal stress on understanding the user, as well as what is being said " by combining Nuance's speech recognition with text-to-speech, voice biometrics, and natural language understanding".
Nuance Enterprise Division executive VP Robert Weideman averred that "Nina is a watershed innovation for the automated customer service industry, not only because it brings the virtual assistant directly into an app, but because it raises the bar through its level of interactive dialog and language understanding".
Weideman went on to say that "For the first time on a mobile device, our virtual assistant doesn't just understand what you said and what you want, we can actually understand who said it."
So, unlike Siri, Nina can distinguish who the speaker is - you or someone else - thanks to the voice biometrics. If the app can tell it's you and not another individual, it makes the need for passwords redundant. This human-like aspect makes Nina a welcome change, with a distinct possibility of it acting as a security feature.
Want To Talk To Nina? Here's How.
Nina operates on the same principle as other voice recognition apps, requiring a network connection to function. Nina dials up to the cloud or the "Nina Virtual Assistant Cloud" in order to deconstruct what is being spoken.
Additionally, Nuance has also focused on natural language navigation within Nina. This aspect negates the need for users to memorize the "trigger words", a series of common words or phrases a voice-recognition app knows and uses to process commands. With Nina, users can simply tell the app whatever they wish and phrase it any way they desire.
Currently, Nina demos showcase the app's generic female voice. However, for the final Nina integration, 40 different voices will be on offer by the developers. What's more users will also have the option to integrate their own voice personas!
What About The Apps?
Android and iOS users hold on to your horses. The initial lot of Nina-powered apps are expected to hit the digital space by fall.
Moreover, USAA (which provides banking services to the U.S. military) has signed up with Nuance and is partnering it to release a pilot version of the Nina-powered USAA mobile app. The USAA app is slated for a release later this month. A full release of the app, it is speculated, will release early next year.
With Nina in its kitty, Nuance is targeting large businesses instead of small developers. Businesses can now sign up for Nina. No information is available on the SDK or cloud service price bracket.
Nuance posted a Nina YouTube video, take a dekko yourself.
