BBC is a well known public broadcaster and one of the coolest things about the giant is that they are very open to emerging technologies.
Their next move is dubbing into the assistant market. According to the corporation, the BBC is planning to launch a digital voice assistant next year.
They are designing it to work on all smart speakers, TVs and mobiles, so it won’t be locked to a specific hardware product.
Apparently, the wake up word would be Beeb, which parodies the media corporation’s nickname which is “The Beeb.” This is a working title so it might change in the future.
To aid the development of this voice assistant, BBC staff around the UK are being invited to record their voices to train the programme recognize different accents.
“Much like we did with BBC iPlayer, we want to make sure everyone can benefit from this new technology, and bring people exciting new content, programmes and services- in a trusted, easy-to-use way,” a spokesperson said.
This is not surprising from BBC. They are known for iPlayer which is their own 12 year old internet streaming service that is available on a wide range of platforms. They are also known for pushing boundaries in broadcasting with great example being the Planet Earth which was their first show shot in HD and was amazing at its time (2006).
Foraying into voice assistants may allow BBC to spread its tentacles further than what iPlayer did. However, with the current voice assistant market dominated by Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, their planned assistant will have to compete with the established giants.
